Yep, humor. I agree with Luke, I need to have a bit more humor in thus story. I didn't go through with making Jericho the court jester like I said in the previous part, but I think I slipped a little bit back into my comedy element here. Hopefully. Enjoy.
Oh, and a bit of a note here. I started it when Randy Orton was still champion, and so that is why it's stated here that he holds the Heavyweight title.
Date Uploaded: 24 September 2004
Chapter 3: Very Colorful Characters
Like Bischoff had said, the walls had ears anyway, and pretty soon the news of Eugene's impending decision discreetly spread throughout the locker room. Despite being specifically instructed not to influence Eugene's decision in any way, William Regal obviously didn't make it this far in the business playing dumb and sitting the sidelines. He immediately saw a loophole; if he couldn't advise Eugene directly, then he would get others to do it for him.
Sir Christopher Benoit was a knight of action, having risen through the ranks purely on his abilities and on nobody else's. He had taken on men like Lord Helmsly, Sir Jericho and Lord Kain and had prevailed against them, much to the displeasure of the first and third. As for Sir Jericho, well, the two had beaten each other senseless in the past and had trained in the same garrison. As such they respected each other a lot.
Eugene had encountered the two of them at the barracks one day, bruised, spent, and lying on their backs on the ground, swords to their sides.
"I won that round," Sir Jericho wheezed out breathlessly.
Sir Benoit spat out another tooth before replying. "I think you'd have to be standing to be able to claim that."
Jericho then caught sight of Eugene. "All right then. Hey junior, help me up!"
"Do it and I'll cut your legs off," Benoit said, somehow directing the threat to both Eugene and his exhausted sparring mate at the same time. He was an exemplary man, and obviously one of few words.
Few words but to the point. Chris Benoit's simple advice for Eugene was this: "Trust people like Triple H as far as you can throw them. Better yet, just throw him. Because you'll gain nothing from allying with a scumbag like that."
If Sir Benoit was a man of few words, Sir Jericho the Lionheart was the exact opposite. He was a bigger talker than he was a fighter, which isn't to say that he wasn't competent enough as the latter. Often he boasted about himself and disparaged his enemies, and since his foes were powerful yet disliked men like Von Bishop and Lord Helmsly, the people lauded him despite his egomaniacal qualities.
Of course that wasn't to say that his mouth didn't land him in trouble from time to time. Take the instance when Princess Stephanie McMahon came home to visit for a while. Jericho, arguably not as drunk as he insisted, had leaned over and said loudly to the king's daughter as the music stopped, "… of you in the good old days. I agree, they are fine mammaries-I mean memories."
The suspiciously well-endowed Princess Stephanie duly rewarded him with a slap to the face. Did he learn anything from the experience? Of course not.
And Chris Jericho took Eugene to the side in the locker room and told him in his usual cutting manner, "What are you, a glutton for punishment? Triple H already wiped his ass with you and threw you away once, and now you're contemplating a second helping?? Come on, Eugene, I know you have to be smarter than that! You've got plenty of opportunities to make it big; you don't have to rely on that beefed-up, big-nosed jack-off and the rest of his posse."
Lady Victoria was one of the few noblewomen in Rem who had not gained her status traipsing by the side of a man. She had once been thought insane by the people due to her tendency to give everyone crazed looks and her obsession with destroying women like Patricia Stratus and Lady Lita Dumas. Now she had seemingly reformed, and yet most still wondered what on earth happened between the supposedly close bond she had had with Lord Steven Richards, a man who, incidentally, was given that title through default when Victoria had acquired hers.
"If a woman can be called a Lady simply by marrying a Lord, then I would think that the reverse ought to be true as well," Lady Victoria had proclaimed staunchly to Von Bishop. Her persistence won out in the end.
Victoria gave her own plight a few months back as an example to Eugene. "An opportunity to join Evolution myself came up once. Triple H said that I was a strong, dominant woman, and that was what his faction needed. In all actuality I think the only reason for the invitation was for Evolution to bogart all the belts on RAW. And seeing as Trips and any of the others would have made very ugly women, they decided that the best possible way to get the Women's Championship was to actually recruit a female. Once I realized that I turned the offer down. Fortunately by that time Triple H was so engrossed with his feud with Shawn Michaels, he barely noticed."
Sir Sexton Hardcastle, despite being easygoing by nature, was a knight not happy with his title. More specifically, he wasn't fond of the name that followed his title. The man once known as Adam Copeland, obscurely nicknamed Edge, seemed to have Lady Luck snorting uproariously at him the day he was proclaimed a knight.
"It is NOT funny," Sir Hardcastle often muttered grumpily at a snickering Jericho, who spread the story freely and with much mirth.
The prefect had been different then, a jovial man by the name of Michael Foley. Prefect Foley, in a very rare period of drunkenness, had abruptly dubbed him Sir Sexton Hardcastle, a name Copeland had once conjured for fun when he had been young and, apparently, was working very hard to impress the ladies. Now he was considered one of Rem's heartthrobs, and yet he still worked continuously to get his outrageous name changed.
Following the creation of Edge's fictional Rem character, Eugene hereafter found it hard not to snicker in the blonde Canadian's face when encountering him. If Edge noticed he didn't say anything about it, but did offer this piece of advice about his situation. "Let's face it, Trips isn't the nicest guy out there. You'd be better off under your uncle, even if he is a dick. Think carefully about this one, Eugene."
Ryan Orton was currently the most unenvied man in Rem, owing to his abrupt turn against Lord Helmsly. In secret, however, the people praised him and looked up to him precisely because of this shift in character. He was not one of Eugene's favorite persons in the world, but did stand his ground when Orton approached him and listened to what he had to say.
"Hey, Eugene," Randy Orton began, a little cautiously because understandably the history between the two was not an amiable one. "I know I was a jerk to you back then, but hear me out. When I was with Evolution, I thought it was the shit. Parties, drinks, women, the works. Now that I've broken free, I realize that it was just shit. Don't make the same mistake I did. Triple H is not the ticket to glory."
Nope, but maybe pinning Orton was, owing to that shiny, gold belt on his shoulder. Eugene entertained the idea for a while as he walked off.
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Not to be outdone, Eric Bischoff sent a bevy of his own superstars to try and sway Eugene's decision. No one was being very subtle about this, were they?
Patricia Stratus fancied herself Rem's leading socialite, but in reality was nothing but a high-class whore. She worked hard to earn herself the title of noblewoman, almost baiting even Sir Jericho once, but it faded out in the end. Rumor was she was even eyeing Lord Helmsly, but their history was not a favorable one, and the aforementioned Lord was still aiming for the King's daughter, despite having been rejected twice.
"Marry Lord Calloway then," Gwendolyn Kim had once kidded her, referring to the rumored practitioner of dark arts in the half of Wentworth called Shamborg.
Patricia shuddered. "Are you insane? Story has it that he has married countless times and his wives all just suddenly disappear without a trace."
"Precisely why she suggested it, Patricia dear," Lady Victoria interjected with a smirk, walking away and leaving an enraged Patricia behind her.
Trish Stratus had been in the makeup chair as she chattered almost mindlessly along to Eugene. "Everything Triple H touches turns to gold. Everyone who's ever crossed paths with him has benefited-Chris Jericho, The Rock, Mick Foley. Look at Randy Orton; he knows that Triple H is the reason he's where he is now but is too stubborn to accept it, the little ingrate. You could gain a lot from this alliance," here she looked him up and down and smirked. "God knows you could use it!"
Lord Kain the Unmasked had been a fearsome creature when he had been shrouded, living almost as a recluse in his dark hall at the edge of the city. Now that he had exposed his true face, literally, he had become an eerie force that seemed to delight in walking the streets and sending people, especially little children, scurrying from his path. Lately he had forced the Lady Lita Dumas to become his bride, and she was often seen being dragged unwillingly from place to place by her undesired husband.
Eugene had once been unfortunate enough to be seated close to them in a banquet, having heard a bit of their conversation. "… How many more men's legs do I have to break before you are convinced of my love for you?" Lord Kain asked in a voice that seemed to want to project a creepy sort of warmth.
"A creature like you is devoid of love; what you feel for me and what swells in my stomach is only obsession," Lady Lita had replied coldly, merely generating an odd smile on the face of the malevolent spell caster.
Considering he had been silent for so long, when Kane talked it was always best to listen in case he decided to MAKE you pay attention. "Triple H is a nasty son of a bitch, but in a business like this a man that influential will be your best friend. You don't have to like someone to be able to profit from them."
If Sir Sexton Hardcastle was unfortunate in name, his former partner Christian Cage was decidedly unfortunate in profession. Both having trained as competent soldiers, Hardcastle was luckily bestowed the title of knight, despite said name, but Christian was given another route, also by former Prefect Foley on that drunken night.
"Every time I despair, thinking that I am in a perfectly horrible position, I comfort myself by looking at you," Sir Hardcastle would from time to time mock his once comrade-in-arms.
"Screw you and the horse you rode in on, Hardcastle," Christian Cage would sourly reply, the bells on his fool's hat jingling as his fury rose.
Yes, court jester. His abrupt fall may all be attributed to former Prefect Foley's intoxication, but rumor had it that Sir Jericho had more than a hand in his predicament. Christian has long desired revenge, but once you juggle and fall over in the name of entertainment it is particularly hard for anybody to take you seriously.
If Eugene found it difficult to keep a straight face around Edge, it was practically impossible around Christian. This Christian obviously noticed. "I don't know why you're laughing, chumpstain. If you turn down joining up with Evolution you're screwed, and if you accept it you're screwed too, just possibly not as bad. Pick your poison, loser."
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There were a few more notable personages in Rem. One was James Ross, a goodwill ambassador usually in charge of looking after the ties with adjoining kingdoms, not to mention soothe over any arguments that may have surfaced between Von Bishop and the prefect of Shamborg, Thaddeus Long. A good friend of his was an old knight called Sir Jeremy Lawler who did little nowadays save for attend tournaments and ogle women more than half his age. He also had a weird tendency to declare himself 'The King,' usually not when the true monarch of Wentworth was around.
Madam Molly Holly was the only female knight among the royal guard. She had trained long, hard, and quite stubbornly to be able to earn her title. At one point Sir David Batista had cruelly told her that, even though she was knighted, hell would freeze over before she could call herself on par with the other men. In a fit of fury she had sheared off all her hair and challenged him to a jousting match, one she unfortunately lost. She did prove that she was as fearless as any other knight, however. Nowadays, if without a helmet, she was usually supporting a variety of different wigs to cover her head.
Alan Snow was formerly the court jester, until the Prefect Foley absolved him of his duties (a bit hesitantly, though) and replaced him with Christian Cage. Now he spent his days as a teacher much like Willem Regal. Gregory Helms was the town crier, always the first with news. If he was first, however, a mysterious masked man calling himself Hurricane seemed to always be the second, arriving at troubled scenes always in time to save the day. He irked some of the knights to no end, to be quite sure, but some were happy that he took care of some of the smaller cases for them.
There was a knight by the name of Sir Rocky Johnson II, who was often traveling outside of the kingdom. He visited Wentworth every now and then, and Eugene had been lucky to meet him. Much like Sir Jericho he was outspoken, straightforward and curiously referred to himself in the third person, but with all his quirks was more than able to back up his words with actions. He was quite enthralled with the world of acting, however, and was rumored to be playing the role of Hamlet in the next Shakesperean production. To be or not to be a knight, that is the question…
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A lot of them, in some way, shape or form, had tried to provide Eugene with their own input about his predicament. Little did they know, Eugene had already long made his decision. Now, knocking on Eric Bischoff's door, he couldn't help but wonder if this would be the best or the worst choice he would make in his career.
cont'd
This started off well but kind of fizzed out towards the end. Basically I just wanted to introduce some of the characters Eugene had made for his little fictional world. They aren't final, not by a long shot, and more wrestlers will be popping up here and there, from both brands. Next chapter Eugene states his choice, and the young squire finally comes face to face with Lord Helmsly! Oh man, even I'm confusing myself now... Hope that you check back for it!
