A Starr is Born Pt7
Reworked by Wendy C from
a story written by Mistress X.

It was a good thing showbiz paid well, because the first thing I did when we got back to the States was replace my entire wardrobe, well most of it. I kept some of the cuter things.

"I'm not your husband," Cassidy complained as she hefted a bundle of shopping bags onto a slatted mall bench and dropped herself between them.

"Oh but you'd be such a good provider" I teased as I piled the bags I carried beside them.

"Do you even have enough room for all this?" she questioned.

"Good point" I confessed. "I'll have to get more suitcases too."

"I think you're taking your new role too far" she groused.

"Well I think she's a lot more fun now" added Violet as she caught up behind me.

"Thank you Violet" I said with exaggerated graciousness. "Come on Cass, Mike had me cooped up for months. I cooped myself up for months before that. It's been almost a year since I felt like getting out and doing something and had the chance" I pleaded with her. "And right now what I want to do is embrace things. I want to make up for lost time, I want to explore the new me. I never really took the time to understand the old me. And right now the new me wants clothes and makeup."

"That's all well and good Hon" said Cassidy. "But the new me, the still kinda jet-lagged me wants to get back to the bus and sleep."

"Damn," I said and snapped my finger. "Sleepwear, I need new pyjamas."

"I know the cutest place for that," said Violet. "I hope they have one here."

"No," said Cassidy. "I don't need both of you in that bus sitting around in the same see-through nothin half the time."

"I'll just have to sleep in my new underwear then," I ribbed.

"Okay dammit, fine," said Cass. "Do what you want". She stood up and piled all the bags into Violet's and my arms. "But I'm going back to the bus."

"You can take some of this with you!" I called as she walked away.

"Nope," she didn't even look back.

Violet and I spent the rest of the day shopping and a good portion of it in the salon, where she got her hair done and I took a makeup class. It's good to learn new things. I myself wasn't really interested in my hair. It's a weird side-effect of the spores created by the bald Zeeg. Needless to say Cassidy was sort of pissed at how we filled the bus with stuff when we got back. The truth was she was just irritated at being back on the bus instead of in fancy hotel rooms. She'd feel better when she got to go home for a while.

The next morning found us in the stadium convention hall for breakfast. It was how crew and talent often started their days, but I hadn't shown up to a lot of them recently. I had sort of cloistered myself for a while, and in Europe I ordered a lot of room-service. Still, catering had gotten up early to put out this spread, and I was hungry. I held a plastic plate in my hand and looked over the table. There wasn't a lot of bread, but there was a ton of ham and sausage. There were a lot of big guys on high-protein diets here after all.

There was a time when I would have partaken, a heap of eggs, bacon, and a pint of orange juice would have been my choice then. Now I didn't have the stomach for it. I'd rather have a muffin, and a strip or two of bacon. Eggs were nice but something seemed weird about eating now that I made my own. The centerpiece of a complete breakfast though was a cup of coffee. Ever since Naples, the smell of coffee tickled me in a certain special way and I didn't pass it up.

I filled up a piping hot cup of coffee and then spent a good three minutes trying to convince myself to get the blueberry muffin instead of the chocolate chip. I'd always like chocolate fine, but now I liked chocolate like a woman likes chocolate, which is a different thing entirely.

It didn't help that the Cole Brothers were loudly arguing about God knows what across a table behind me. In a business with this much testosterone flowing there was a lot of posturing, and fights were pretty common. Everybody has to be the big bad alpha. Men. I finally settled on the blueberry, put it on my plate, and then scouted around the room, when I spotted Violet sitting at a table on the opposite end. I went to go eat with her when I felt something funny as I walked. Looking down there was a long piece of tape stuck to my sneaker. Shaking my foot did nothing to dislodge it. In fact it only wrapped it around my toe. There were a dozen tables in this room, good ones too, not like the
press-board gimmick tables we crash through on a weekly basis.

In spite of this it didn't occur to me to put any of my breakfast down. No, I just placed my coffee mug on my plate, and balanced on one leg while I tried to free my foot from its garbage prison. This was a mistake. Rhett Cole had leaned across the table and tried to lock up with his brother Kent in the middle of breakfast like it was a match, and Kent pushed him off, sending him pitching backward, right towards me.

I was keen enough to spot this in time to avoid it. Unfortunately the only evasive manoeuvre available to me at the time was to leap away off my one grounded foot. This had the intended effect of allowing me to avoid the big dope, but also the unintended side-effect of sending my coffee flying through the air. It came crashing down on one of the table seats, an occupied table seat. That table seat was currently occupied by Tsunami Akimoto.

The champ stood up towering over me, a brown stain on the belly of his white sleeveless workout shirt and an even bigger brown stain in the lap of his blue gym shorts. He said something very irate in his indecipherable native tongue then took a step toward the downed Rhett Cole. Akimoto had something of a reputation as a hooker, that’s a legit fighter in wrestling and he weighed almost as much as both Coles combined. These facts in tandem sent the brothers scrambling out of the hall in quick fashion, like a pair of whipped puppies. Aki turned now and looked at me, a very stern expression coming down on me like a rainstorm.

"I am SO sorry," I pleaded legitimately more repentant than afraid he'd actually commit violence against me. It was weird, because as a guy I have no doubt he'd have smashed my face in, but now I was pretty confident, on an instinctual level, that I could get away with more. I reflexively took a napkin from my plate and began to dab it on his shirt randomly. He was shockingly firm in the torso for a man as thick as he was, and as I dabbed, my hand unconsciously moved more toward the center of the spill, lower. As my hand moved over his shorts I stopped, startled I'd felt something akin to a baby's arm. I stood, frozen for a half second my hand still on it, before he pronounced something in Japanese. "Oh, right, um" I babbled. "Hey, um... come with me." I took him by the hand, "I'll get you cleaned up." He smelled like coffee and that tickled me a certain special way.

"Oh... oh... mmm..." It was no small thing the sudden left turn my life had taken. A year prior, I had been a brash confident man, admittedly something of a womanizer, a high-level bro just looking to get off the mid-card. Now I was gripping a shelving unit in a broom closet getting railed by the World Heavyweight Champion, moaning like a bitch in heat.

Cassidy wouldn’t have approved but she was home on vacation so she didn't have to know. I'm sure Aki knew who I was, just like the last three guys on the roster knew who I was, but the dick wants what it wants. And what they all want is to slide into a nice wet tight available hole. Well I was nice, wet and certainly available, while thanks to Zeeg elasticity I was still practically virginal.

Not that that would have mattered much with the monster slamming into me. Who says Asian guys are small? He was easily my personal best. Now that I emitted Zeeg sex pheromones when I was aroused, men were even easier to convince. So there I was, leaned over, his big hands wrapped almost clear around my waist, my plastic girls swinging wildly with each titanic thrust, working my way to my second orgasm of the session. That was something I appreciated. The female orgasm I had learned was somewhat less complete than its singular male counterpart. It was great, make no mistake about that, but it wasn't the all or nothing total crescendo that cuming as a man had been. Consequentially, if I didn't orgasm at least three times during sex I felt a little ripped off, so I'd come to appreciate the ridden hard and put away wet method of love making.

He was really, really good at that so far. "Uhhh... uhhhh... come on... play with my titties" I moaned, knowing full well he understood. He preferred talking in Japanese, but he could speak English. His hand brushed against my ribs and he palmed one of my girly globes. I'd thought they were kind of big before, but in his colossal hands they seemed almost petite. His coarse hand rubbed over one of my sensitive nipples, which sent an electric jolt to my spine and when he gave me a squeeze, my box immediately returned the favour to his dick, trying desperately to milk him of its own volition. That was orgasm number two and he wasn't even slowing down. I felt his free hand move down to my ass and he took the whole cheek in his palm, no mean feat and he absolutely mauled it.

He squeezed my ass like he owned it and for the moment I didn't mind. One of my hands went to my free breast and played with my nipples. It helped my push to an almost immediate third orgasm. It went on like that for a while. He'd racked up a score of five before he began to quicken and grunt himself. "Wait... wait" I told him and pushed him off. He stepped back and I dropped to my knees in front of him, getting on the level of his glistening intimidating cock. We didn't want to get caught making a mess in here so I committed to it, and took it the best I could into my mouth.

He tasted, understandably like pussy. It was a flavor I'd not tasted for quite some time, even before I'd turned to the dick side. He wasn't the first cock I'd sucked, but naturally he was the biggest and he gave me plenty of room to work with my hands. I jacked off his shaft like a mad woman and kept just the head inside me, giving myself the room I needed for the inevitable climax. Soon he was grunting loudly and he gripped my hair as best as he could. I knew what was coming so I sped up my pace and tongued his urethra. That was the trigger for him to absolutely blast my tonsils. I had come close to being choked out a few times in my life but this was the first time it was by an actual cock. I struggled to keep it all in. I sat on my knees, holding in a cough until I managed to swallow.

Aki looked down and gave me a chuckle and I responded with giggling embarrassment. I leaned forward and kissed his tip, then cleaned him off properly. He stuffed himself back into his shorts while I took some disinfectant spray from off of one of the shelves and misted it about, not wanting to leave the place smelling like gash after all. Throwing his soiled shirt over his shoulder he gave me a good, appreciative slap on my bare ass, moved the chair away from under the door handle and left me to get dressed.

I trotted to the gym, occasionally checking my breath, when a crewman stopped me. "There you are," he said. "You were supposed to be in the gym. I'm gonna get in trouble taking so long to find you."

"What is it?" I asked annoyed.

"Get in your ring gear and go to the media room," he said. "You've gotta take some pictures and get a body scan for merchandising."

I spent the next two hours T-posing for action figures and video game models. I didn't mind, it was easy work for the residuals I'd be getting, but the days in the mo-cap studio were still ahead. After I was done I headed toward the bus to get in my gym gear again, but I was stopped once more. This time I was told to meet Mike in the conference room. I changed into my casuals and a set of half-inch pumps and went to where I had been instructed.

Inside I found it wasn't just Mike. There were a few people sitting around the table, including Dawn Williams, AKA Miami Dawn, a guy who I recognized as the writer who'd given me my nom de guerre, Sterling Steve Bosh, Sal Donner - both color commentators for the show, Walter, a couple of refs I knew, and Angel Madison. "Sit down," ushered Mike. I took a seat, two chairs over from Angel. "We're here to discuss your title feud," Mike said generally. "So this is the plastic bimbo you're handing my title to?" questioned Angel incredulously.

"You're one to talk Titan Tits," I muttered.

"Oh I wasn't talking about the boob job Honey," she came back. "You're ALL fake."

"Save it for the promos ladies," interjected Mike.

I was a little chuffed that Mike had actually called me a lady though he may have meant it in the boot camp sense. He'd been pretty reluctant to recognize my new sex until now. "And any reference to Casey's former identity, or that such an identity exists, is strictly off limits. Now, we're gonna have you two feud for the next eight weeks, with Dawn here filling a supplementary role and then put the strap on Casey at Ring Wars in Vegas. We're here today to figure out the particulars."

I put my hands to my collar. "I get a title match......at Ring Wars?" I aspirated. That was just the biggest pay-per-view, the biggest wrestling event of the year. I'd only ever been on the card once, low card, no stakes and I'd lost. Now I was going to win a title, the first title of my career, either of my careers, at the biggest show there was!

"The execs say you get the belt, I gotta give you the belt," Mike conceded. "So I'm thinking we'll start with a number one contender’s feud in the beginning" he went on. "First we'll set up matches between Sam and Dawn to see who gets the title shot. Since Dawn is Angel's stooge, she interferes on her behalf. Sal I want you to really play up the angle that she's interfering, because she knows Dawn will roll over for her."

"I'll take sides for the heels," Bosh volunteered.

"We'll do two or three weeks of shenanigans. Smoz finishes between Sam and Dawn. Then Sam will get the number one spot officially and lead into a feud with Angel" Mike explained. "But I want the heat between Sam and Angel from the start. So what are we putting on tap this week?"

"Um, Angel, you wanna do a run in?" asked the writer. "No, no, no" he answered his own question. "A run in seems too desperate this early. We need something more devious. How about we use the old music cue distraction?"

"We can do a roll-up," added Dawn.

"I'll kick out at two," I nodded.

"So I'll hit Angel's music during the match. What's the signal going to be?" questioned Walter.

"It should be while Sam has the momentum," said Dawn.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll do a sequence of a couple big moves and end with a flying forearm out of the corner. You can take one of those right?" I asked.

"Oh sure," Dawn answered. Unlike Angel, Dawn was nothing like her character. She was a sweet girl that didn't value herself enough, very eager to please. She played Angel's sort of unofficial henchwoman.

"Then I'll move to the ropes, watch the ramp, and that's when Dawn gives me the school-boy," I said.

"Should I actually come out?" Angel inquired.

"It's a good question," said Mike. "Yeah, I think so. But walk casual like to ringside, join Steve and Sal at the table. That way Steve can use the “she's just scouting the competition” excuse."

Steve gave a thumb’s up without looking up from his notes.

"So the cue should be pretty early in the match right?" asked Angel. "It'll give me some mic time at the commentary table."

"That's fine," said Mike.

"This is all well and good," said the writer. "But we have to finish this in a no-contest to keep the number one contender spot up in the air. How are we going to do that?"

"Double count-out's always good for that," said Mike.

"I got it," injected Angel. "So it goes to the outside, Star-fag here hits the finisher on the floor, knocks Dawn for a loop, and the ref goes to check on her. That's when I jump up from the announce table, and WHAM, head shot with the title belt. They're both down, ref makes the count."

"It works," admitted Mike, completely letting the slur slide. "Keeps the heat in the right place. You wanna do that Dawn?"

"I don't know," she said timidly. "It's a DDT right?"

"It's a Butterfly DDT," I told her.

"I knew a really good guy who got knocked out for real taking a DDT on the outside," she lamented.

"Dawn," said Angel. "That was 35 years ago and he'd never taken a DDT before and it was on the concrete, not play-mats like nowadays."

"We can practice it," I reassured her. "All day if you’d like to."

"Okay," said Dawn, with the slightest confidence.

"That's it for the specifics for now," said Mike. "Let's talk more about the overall trajectory of the feud."

The next day saw Dawn and I in the gym, getting a feel for each other and practicing our spots. We did the DDT spot a few times in the ring before trying it on the carpet. She had it down the first time and she was a good worker. She had a bright future in the company if she'd just be a little more assertive.

We sat on the apron of the practice ring catching our breath. "You know" she said. "You should really grow your hair out. I could do the hair-pull spot."

I ran my fingers through my sweaty bristles, and looked at the bad citrus-blond dye job that went with her gimmick. "It's not that easy," I explained, "you want to get back in there?"

Just as we were about to climb back through the ropes a crewman approached me and handed me a folded card.

"What's this?" I asked.

"I was just told to give it to you" he answered as he returned to his duties.

"Secret admirer" teased Dawn.

"This isn't fucking middle-school" I told her. "Or... maybe it is" I said to myself as I read the card. It was from Aki, he wanted to meet me again. A few of the guys I'd slept with had tried to call me up to hook up again, even date me, Nate in particular. But Nate wasn't the jackhammer that Aki had been. "Hey, Dawn, um, I'm going to have to call this short. I've got someplace I need to be."

I took a taxi to the motel on the card, stopping along the way to pick up a box of the largest condoms I'd ever purchased, just to make sure. I knocked on the room I'd been told, waited a moment, heard a chain come loose, and then the door opened and there he was. The silent juggernaut physically drew me into the room without a word being said. The moment I was inside and the door closed, he had his hands on me. He was shirtless and I could already see the sizable bulge in his pants. We both already knew what we were here for. The card had been nothing if not direct. He led me by my ass to the motel bed which I threw myself upon, hiking up my light paisley dress to reveal my damp thong panties. His nose was in them a moment later. I almost came on the spot with my thighs wrapped around his head. When he pulled away, my underwear went with him, and as he undid his pants while I tore into the box of contraceptives.

We went all night. The man really had the stamina of a champion, though I did manage to dehydrate him a few times. He seemed please though, I know I was. The only disappointing moment is when I stopped bouncing my head in the middle of a blowjob to dig into my purse for my phone. I had to call Violet to make sure the police weren't alerted because I was out all night again. Still, it was a riot of a marathon fuck. I was going to endeavor to make this a regular occurrence, I didn't care if we both ended up rubber legged in our matches.

I woke up the next morning pinned between one huge arm, and the big smooth torso it was attached to. He had his arm around me in a way I couldn't have escaped from even if I wanted to. It was a very good thing that at that exact moment, I didn't. It seemed like he was still asleep, most of him anyway. His morning wood was obviously a multicultural phenomenon. It probably helped that he held a naked girl against himself all night. Good dreams. As for me it was a firm mattress, a big now sweaty from sex, firm mattress and it was a night's sleep I wouldn't pass up again.

Or maybe I was the mattress. He’d been so dominant the night before guiding the whole thing. I’d practically been a passenger almost a sex doll for most of it, albeit one that would moan and writhe and buck her orgasming hips for most of it. I would have been more than ready for round two, or round twelve, as the case was but I hadn't brought my toothbrush and my breath was...... well it probably smelled a lot like jizz. I didn't have to swallow this time, but I had. I really needed to hit the shower and get to work.

"Hey" I nudged him. "Hey, I’ve got to get going."

"Stay," he answered groggily.

"I've got to get to work," I added.

"Stay," he insisted, and pulled me over himself.

"Alright" I conceded softly, "one more quickie. But then I really DO have to go”.

I got back to the arena late, made worse by Violet asking a lot of questions about where I was and why I was using her mouthwash. I didn't know why I didn't want to tell her where I'd been. I'd not been shy about things before, but something was different about Aki, about banging a main eventer. Maybe I was worried she’d accused me of sleeping my way to the top.

The day went on, I got in a light workout, and then we had to prepare for the show. Dawn and I went over our spots again, and we were called to our match. Everything went pretty much to plan, except we decided to do the DDT spot on the ring apron instead of the floor, it was a little safer but it sold the effect just as well.

Dawn took the bump and slumped to the floor. When the ref checked on her, I could see her subtly squeezing his fingers to signal she wasn't actually hurt and then when I turned around I was blindsided. All I saw was a pink and silver belt coming at me and I got absolutely crushed. Angel laid the side plate into me legit, and stiff. I went to the floor and watched Angel walk over me and around the ring while the ref counted "One... Two... Three... Four..." It was a painfully long ten count.

Chapter Fifteen

"What a bitch," cursed Vie as she passed me an icepack.

"That's not exactly a revelation," I grumbled as I spit blood into a nearby bucket. She hadn't knocked any teeth loose but I'd cut the inside of my cheek. The EMT made sure to check me out briefly and told me I was okay.

"Hey, there you are," said Mike hustling toward me. "There's a.......what happened?"

"Angel potatoed me," I said. It was an industry term for a legitimate head shot.

"Well one of the undercard matches went short and we gotta fill some air. We're gonna do a backstage promo about your match before the main event. I need you in front of the screen in five. Oh, and keep the icepack, it's a good touch."

I rolled my eyes and gave him an unenthusiastic thumb’s up. Such was the business.

I made sure I could talk straight and cut the promo. I went on about how I'd been cheated and how Dawn and Angel were colluding, and how I'd get my payback. It was actually really hard to do without slipping into heel mode. I made sure to take notes to practice my baby face mic skills.

So the next week went much the same. We'd do a pitch meeting or two about the match, work out the spots, figure out the shenanigans and how to make the finish a smoz. Dawn and I would practice together, Violet and I would cut made up promos in the bus to get my mic skills up, and I would occasionally sneak out and meet with Aki.

The week after that Cassidy came back. She talked about our matches on TV and demanded I tell her everything about the feud plans. She kept talking about how she bragged about us to her family when they watched the show, but reassured me she hadn't told any of them who I really was.
I had to be a little more cautious with sneaking out now, meeting during the day and not staying out all night. Cassidy was more prone to ask questions than Violet was.

As for Aki himself, he became more comfortable with me. We varied up locations a bit. It wasn't always just cheap motel rendezvous’. He once fucked me in the back seat of a rented convertible like a sex crazed teenager. That's not to say we were what you'd call dating. It wasn't like dinner then a movie type of dating. It definitely involved a lot of laying pipe and at his pace too. It was certainly a good pace, but he always seemed to dictate how we did it.

He also became rather..... possessive of me. This became obvious to me once I began noticing him watching me in the gym and back stage, especially whenever I'd talk to other guys.

The third week of my mini-feud with Dawn came and it was decided, that this would be the blow off match that would segue into my real feud with Angel. The stipulation of the match would see Angel barred from ringside, which was a shame, because I still owed her a receipt for that belt shot.

Dawn and I were working a good match, this was as close to the top of the card as I'd ever gotten and we were determined to put on a high card show. Ruby, Angel's other stooge, had already done a run in which picked up the pace for a bit and it was a tense segment, because if any of her offense had been allowed to connect, that would have been a disqualification and ruined the match and thrown the entire feud off schedule. We practiced the sequence for days. It was a variation on the universal spot, but I had to duck any offense and throw her out of the ring at the end, just to be jumped by Dawn immediately afterward.

After that I had to fight my way back in sufficiently dramatic fashion. Typically it's the heel that runs the match, calling most of the spots and guiding the overall direction, but Dawn was still under confident and I had more experience as a heel anyway, so I took over those duties from her. Pretty soon we were at the false finish, where after much hardship I'd fought to an advantage and had her set up for the Starr Crash, making sure I gave the audience enough time to realize it.

That's when the lights out gimmick happened. All the arena lights went down, and we were in the dark. This was the bit when Angel would jump me under cover of darkness and beat me down as part of her dastardly plan. In the old days Dawn and I would have just stomped around in the dark, made a lot of noise, and then I'd have lain down and waited for the lights to come up, then I'd have sold a beating that never happened, leaving it to the crowd's imagination as to what went down.

Now everybody carried a smart phone with flash photography, or worse still night-vision video, so we had to actually work the spot by feel, in the dark. They'd left just a little bit of light so we could barely see. Angel popped out from under the ring where she'd been hiding. Before this match and after the last one, during the commercial break, the roadies had come out in their identical hats and uniforms to “run maintenance on the ring.” A canny observer might have noticed one of the “roadies” had a big set of fake tits, and slyly crawled under the ring before the others left. That way Angel could get in position for the spot without being under the ring all night. While Dawn and I were working, she was stripping out of her uniform and into her ring gear.

I looked around trying to sell the confusion when Angel jumped popped up the bottom rope and absolutely blasted me with a stiff clothesline across the chest. That was two I owed her. I went down, bumped like I was supposed to and she and Dawn started stomping at me as loud as they could. Angel was not being as careful about it as Dawn was. Angel moved to the corner and went for her signature Fallen Angel elbow drop, a lame cartwheel elbow drop that was just an excuse to flip her skirt up. She completely whiffed it in the dark by the way but I still sold it like death and she slid under the bottom rope and ran up the ramp and out of sight.

That was the cue, and the lights came up with me on the mat selling my head, and Dawn standing over me. Steve and Sal, I was sure were talking up the “what the hell just happened” angle for the TV and internet audience. Dawn hopped over me and up to the nearest corner and then hit me with her Sea Breeze Senton, a frankly impressive second turnbuckle senton, flipping completely over in a low front flip, and landing with her back onto my stomach. Without moving she hooked my leg and leveraged in a pin. The ref dropped down and counted. "One... Two... Thr..."

I snapped my shoulder off the canvas for probably the biggest crowd pop of my career so far. Of course that was the way it was supposed to go. Dawn, to her credit, should have gotten an Oscar for how she sold the shock and disappointment at that bit. I crawled to my feet, really conveying the pain and fatigue, not all of which was a staged act. One of the great things about playing the underdog is you can slow down later in the match without disappointing anyone. Now that all the scripted spots were done, we were free to work at our own pace until we went for the go home sequence, which was Dawn getting me on her shoulders in a fireman's carry, which I slipped out of and reversed into the Starr Crash.

She didn't roll through a DDT like Cass tended to, so I flopped her onto her back, and covered her for the one... two... three. Cheers rang out so loud it made my miraculous kick-out from earlier sound like study hall. I was the number one contender for the first time in either of my careers. The mini-feud was over. It was a shame I wouldn't get to work with Dawn again for a while, but on the plus side, now I'd get my hands on Angel, and I owed her two.

I staggered back stage catching my breath, when I saw a familiar face from the past.

"That was a great show," he said.

"Ed!" I cried. Dead Ed, the last guy I'd ever wrestled as a man, wearing his ring gear. "How are you doing? You're dressed to work. Did you do a match tonight? I didn't see."

"I'm doing fine Case," he answered. "I'm real sorry about what happened to you though. I wanted to tell you that, and um, no. I'm actually up next."

"Wow. You really moved up the card Ed. How'd you swing that?" I questioned.

"I didn't," he said. "I'm getting squashed. It is what it is, "Sometimes, even in the big leagues, you have to play the jobber. "Hey, we've all been there," I told him. "Don't sweat it. At least you're jobbing for a star. And, don't worry about me. I'm doing alright. I'm going to be okay," I reached out and, I don't know why, but I hugged the big goth goon. He represented some sort of bridge between my two careers I suppose. But I suddenly regretted it when I saw over his shoulder, Aki standing behind a stack of cargo crates, staring right at us.

When I got out of the shower the backstage area was a beehive. Everybody was moving back and forth with a really panicked pace and murmuring about something. I snaked my way through trying to get answers from busy people as I went. Finally I found Cassidy watching the show on one of the back stage monitors. "What the hell is going on?" I questioned her.

"Bad accident in the ring," she said. "Dead Ed took a bad pile-driver and broke his neck."

"Jesus, I just talked to him. Is he okay?" I asked.

"He's alive. That's all I know."

"Who the hell was he wrestling?" I demanded.

"Akimoto" Cassidy stated plainly.