In this business... there are moves.... patterns... wheels if you will... that become as second nature as breathing.
It's why we go into drill over and over. In practice. In matches. Card after card after card. In the US, we do it by endless shows in nameless places. It's why when you build something like we rebuilt it in New Jersey, you fight to ends you didn't think you'd go to in order to protect it. That's how we do it here. That's how they do it elsewhere, too.
It's what makes the Japanese and the Mexicans legendary. The moves that flash like lightning. Set in stone and able to be played at a speed beyond notice. The card tricks of our business, sleight of hand that happens so quickly, the untrained eye can't pick them up. Hell, even the trained eye can't, always...but we can see the effect. It's why I watch Penn & Teller: Fool Us. The professionals trying to trick each other. And if you win, if you can do something that they cannot figure it out, they give you a spot in their Vegas act and a trophy with "F. U." in big letters.
Because, the network wouldn't let them call it, "Penn & Teller: Fuck U", but that's what they're really about. If they can figure it out, FUCK YOU. You don't deserve to be on that stage. And, if I can figure out Rowan, FUCK HER. I get to throw her out of MY promotion.
Except.
Right now, she's figured ME out. Knew what I would do, how I would react, how I would move. And here comes HER lightning. My head... her kick at my knee. taking my leg out from under me... I can't pivot... I can't really block it... she's practiced it so long, it's too FAST to do anything much... except with I've learned. How to take a shot. Normally, I'd sell it. To the crowd. Play the hell out of it, and give the marks a show of their heroine fighting back from IMPOSSIBLE odds to somehow destroy the evil in the other corner, and restore the order threatened with absolute devastation of all that is good and right that it represents.
(It's Barthes, Classic work of symbolic theory using wrestling as it's model. Look it up.)
BAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM... we hit the canvas and I manage to twist into you enough and get my right forearm down enough to make a big noise..and keep most of the impact on my now-numbed right forearm... a nice mouse will grow over my eyebrow though... as my head bounces off the canvas and I need to buy a second to actually address that impact. but I'm nowhere near as damaged as the crowd thinks I am... I can fight back.. i WILL fight back.. because this fight is not about a show. It's about survival. For me and mine and everything I've built.
The biggest problem is, is that there is one other person in this arena who knows all that. And she knows what to do, and how hurt I am, and how to use that. To destroy all that good and true and beautiful order, and tell Roland Barthes FUCK U to his symbolic theory.
It's Rowan. And she's here, and she doesn't want a show in Vegas and a bigass trophy.
She wants my blood. And I still don't know why.