Despite some of Truth's hold on him snapping, his paranoia and anxiety fading enough to allow him to get a few decent nights' sleep, Miz still wants payback. For himself, and Morrison, and everything that had happened before, and will continue after if he doesn't do something about it. He takes a deep breath, pacing in the hallway before a monitor where Truth's voice is blaring from, showing randomly edited pictures from Disneyland as he mocks an increasingly irritated Wade Barrett. Alex watches on from where he sits nearby, a frown on his face. "Mike...?"
"What?" he all but snaps, not stopping in his repetitive movements.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm waiting," he mutters. "There has to be a..." He trails off, abruptly losing interest in explaining himself further, before walking towards the gorilla position with absolutely no warning. Alex watches on with a frown, turning his attention to the monitor. Sure enough, only a few minutes later, Mike rushes out and attacks Truth. Yet again, the demented man gets the upper hand, however briefly, as Wade roughly attacks Truth and works on double teaming him with the former world champion. Miz is relieved at the assault that's just beginning, finally getting some revenge on his former tag partner, when Sheamus runs out and screws it all up, working with Truth to send both him and Barrett tumbling out of the ring.
He's just starting to regroup when Teddy Long's music hits. Everyone looks up, confused and uncertain why exactly the Smackdown general manager is out on Raw. He's almost expecting a tag match to be made but instead Teddy throws a wrench in Mike's idea, throwing them all into an over-the-top-rope challenge to prepare them for the Rumble. They all brawl for awhile, adjusting to the match stipulations of no submissions or pinfalls, until Mike sees his first opportunity with Wade, Truth and Sheamus all clustered around the ring ropes, struggling. He lunges for the group and pushes Barrett the rest of the way over, stumbling back to get space between him and the other two immediately afterwards. Every man for himself, he thinks over and over as he attempts to regain control over the match, not taking the time to think that maybe eliminating Wade was short sighted, getting rid of his only potential ally too early, leaving him in the ring with two men who had made it well known that they hated him. The rest of the match slips through his fingers quickly as he tries to eliminate Sheamus and fails, unable to correct his stance as Truth lunges in and tosses him over, eliminating him. A minute later, the Irishman hits the floor across from him.
He ignores everything around him as he turns and glares at Truth, pure hate seeping from his veins. He had been scared previously, yeah, unable to separate what had happened with Morrison against what could possibly happen to himself with Truth's targetting him, but with the Rumble inching ever closer, this match had awoke something inside of him. I'm tired of running, he thinks before spotting a flash of something out of the corner of his eye. He's just turned to face it when Sheamus' boot meets his face again, everything going dark as he hits the floor hard.
When he comes to again, he's on his side on a cot in the trainer's office, breathing slow and steady as he blinks at the dully lit room growing clearer around him. He can hear the loud voice of Zack Ryder from across the room as he gasps through the pain inflicted by Swagger not even an hour previously. He sits up, holding his head and sighing loudly. He's still working out what exactly had happened when a hand rests between his shoulderblades, causing him to jerk and his headache to ratchet up all the more. "Ugh," he groans, not needing to look to know who it is.
"Sorry," Alex whispers, shifting to sit down on the cot next to him. "How do you feel?"
He gingerly tilts his head from right to left, grimacing as his neck pops in response. "What happened?"
"Sheamus kicked you on the outside of the ring, knocked you out." Alex takes a deep breath, remembering the split second capture the cameraman had caught of his face after he had hit the ground, his blank, wide eyed stare and how still he had been when the trainers had brought him back to this room. A quiet, still Mike is always so unnatural and frightening... He shakes his head, looking ahead as Zack, sitting across the room from him, tries to jerk away from the trainer's prodding fingers along his ribs and back.
Mike grimaces, rubbing his hand through his hair. "That explains a lot. My whole head is throbbing." Zack snaps at the referee, trying again to get away from yet another examination and Mike cringes away, gripping his head.
Alex sighs, standing. "Let's get out of here, huh? We'll go to the hotel, get some rest. This'll look better in the morning. Alright?"
"Works for me," he grouses, making his way slowly to his feet. He blinks through the dizziness as Alex leads him to the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" the trainer calls out to them before they reach the door. "I'm almost done here, I'll be with you in a second."
"That's fine," Alex calls over his shoulder, pushing the door open. "Just focus on Zack, I'll keep an eye on Mike." Before the trainer can say or do anything else, A-Ri pulls him out of the room and leads him down the hallway, hands on his shoulders to guide him as he wavers.
"Thanks," he mumbles, relaxing into the soft seats of the rental car a few minutes later as Alex adjusts their duffels in the backseat, preparing to drive them to the hotel. "Damn Teddy Long... I don't know who's worse sometimes, Laurinaitis or him." They sit there in silence for a moment. "I never thought I'd kind of miss the Anon GM..."
Alex chuckles, pulling out of the arena parking lot. "Yeah... Well, he screwed with us a lot but he never fired any of us... I guess he had too much fun trying to outmaneuver us."
Mike sighs, his voice faint as he nods. "Yeah, that's true. HHH and Laurinaitis make him look like the most decent person in the WWE."
Alex nods. "Who do you think he was, anyway? We never did find out. HHH took over and he seemingly just faded away, we don't even hear anything about him any more."
"Who knows, it might have been HHH..." Mike shrugs. "I wouldn't put anything past him, after what he did in October."
"Or Laurinaitis. I mean, really, HHH takes over, the Anon GM fades away, barely two months later, HHH is gone and Laurinaitis is put in charge. For all we know, he went after HHH's position so much because HHH had taken his away."
"That's a weird thought," Mike shrugs. "I don't even know if Laurinaitis could pull something like that off. He can barely run WWE as it is, right now. From behind a computer screen... well. I've seen his tweets. He can hardly do that much sometimes."
"And Cole could barely read them, so they made the perfect team." Alex grins as Mike chuckles, relaxing into the seat a little more.
"Yeah. Well, I guess it's just another one of WWE's many unanswered mysteries. We'll probably never know for sure."
"Probably just as well. It had its good points, after all. It could've been worse."
"Yeah," Mike nods vaguely. He knows that Alex speaks the truth. Worse would've been not having a chance at the WWE title, not having fixed things between himself and John before one or the other of them had gotten fired, not being NXT pro twice in a row enough to meet and get to know Alex. He would've been much, much worse off without that period of his career.