Feeling Blue

Link to article: Feeling Blue.

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text=I can give it all back. You can be a winner again.]]
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[[=image Mistah%20Blue]]

Bronson Blue lost at everything his entire life. He was always picked last for dodgeball, always flunked the big test, and he never got the girl either. Nobody knew his name, except as the victim of a horrible prank involving a pizza party and laxatives. What does that do for a person? How many times do you have to lose before you set yourself up to fall short, just so that when it happens, it's in your control? And when you finally give up on yourself, who do you become instead?

Bronson had to grapple with this question earlier than most losers, as a third-grade reject too pathetic to be bullied. Until the day he went to his local mini-mart––an unremarkable place for an unremarkable boy to spend his allowance. But unremarkable or not, he was there for one of the only things that brought him joy, his favorite snack: Slim Jims. 45 calories of processed meat and pure power. Except today, they were on the top shelf. Bronson was short for his age, and couldn't jump to save his life, hence why he was rejected from his community basketball league three weeks ago. So he looked up pitifully at the shrine-like box of divine tubes of beef, pork and chicken which laid just out of his reach. //Oh well//, he thought. //Mom's vegan casserole isn't// that //bad//.

"Lemme get that for ya, kid." A bulky shadow loomed over little Bronson Blue as its owner reached over him. The boy stared open-mouthed as the burly shopper plucked a Slim Jim from the shelf like a giraffe snacking from a tree. The man wore a denim vest, his hair was tied in a bandana, and he peered down at the boy through a cheap yet attention-grabbing pair of plastic shutter glasses. He seemed near his fifties and carried an almost cartoonish gruffness in his voice, but still spoke with all the energy of a man in the prime of his youth. There was no mistaking who this was. Bronson, a 90's kid, grew up watching his commercials every Saturday and Sunday. Standing before him in plainclothes was the Sultan of Slim Jims himself, former WWF turned WWE champion, "Macho Man" Randy Savage. "There ya go, little dude."

Bronson stuttered through chattering teeth. "T-Thank you." The words finally came to him and flowed like a waterfall.

"MistermachomanI'myourbiggestfanIloveyourcommercialsIthinkyoumightbemyrealfatherbutdon'tworryaboutthatcanIgetanautograph?"

"Whoa, slow down there, squirt." Randy Savage squatted down to eye level. "Always love meeting a fan, put 'er there." He recoiled as Bronson shook his hand and feigned a pained expression. "Woah, that's a real MA-CHO grip you got there! A kid as strong as you should be a WWE superstar!"

Bronson's eyes gleamed with wonder. "You really think so?"

"Oh yeah! The Macho Man knows so, little dude! You could be a champ!"

That fated interaction, and one of the few forms of positive reinforcement Bronson received across his entire childhood, spawned his love for his only escape from his perpetually sad reality: "professional wrestling." Every Monday and Friday he'd sit cross-legged in front of his parent's tiny television, which had an antenna taller than its whole body. His parents had made him spend his allowance to buy the right channels, but to him, it was a worthy investment. He would watch real-life heroes and villains, like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Rock, and the Undertaker walk out to crowded arenas and perform feats of power and toughness that shouldn't have been possible. He felt inspired by their myriad costumes, and personalities which radiated a confidence he had never known in his entire life. He wanted to //be// these men.

By the time he was old enough to pay for wrestling school––or almost old enough, but his instructors didn't need to know that––he had already picked out the perfect name and identity for himself: Bronson Blue. (What, you didn't think that was his real name, did you?) His real, mundane life felt like a bad dream, and he would wake up to one where he actually had control, where people appreciated him for his hard-earned talent and the boundless charisma of his alter ego. In a way, it made him feel like a superhero––a colorful, beloved character hiding behind an uninteresting, plainclothed persona.

Every time the fans got on their feet and whooped and hollered for the match to start was because of pros like him. That electric atmosphere of good and evil, the intertwining storylines and rivalries of feuding wrestlers, and all the twists and turns that came with it. And every time the fans celebrated when a babyface landed the three count and saved the day. It was all because of working joes like him. Whether they booed or cheered, there was nothing more satisfying than watching the fans roar with excitement.

But tonight was different. He'd been wrestling on the independent circuit for years, entertaining fans everywhere from gymnasiums, to backyards, to festivals. And this venue was no different, an old events center with a few hundred attendees. But one of them was a scout for the grandest promotion of them all: the WWE.

Bronson peered out from behind the curtain. He could see the most important spectator of the night in the front row, on the opposite side of the ring. He was a stout and bald man, in a black suit. A metallic gleam drew Bronson's gaze to the scout's lapel pin, which was shaped like his company's trademark "W." The man looked unimpressed, sitting cross-legged and lethargically writing in his notepad as the tag-team match in front of him wrapped up.

Bronson would have to give him a show. His opponent for the night, a young up-and-coming babyface called Red Ryan, was announced first. He walked down the ramp to the cheers of his adoring fans. Bronson watched him point finger guns at the scout, which he thought was rather tasteless.

Bronson bounced on his toes as he waited for his music to kick in over the loudspeaker. "Eye of the tiger, eye of the tiger, eye of the tiger," he muttered to himself under his breath. When the music crackled, he didn't waste a second.

He kicked through the curtain with all the force of if he were trying to take a door off its hinges, stretching his arms wide as he showed off his meanest war face, his physique which he'd spent years cultivating in the gym, and his trademark blue body paint. He'd spent his own savings on his new set of glistening purple trunks, which had his name running down the outside of his left leg.

With a sleight-of-hand trick he'd learned from a magician on YouTube, Bronson produced a microphone in his hand seemingly from out of nowhere as he sauntered down to the ring. "Red... Ryan... It's funny, you call yourself red, but Bronson Blue feels like he's looking in a black mirror, 'cause this color-coded cockroach is trying to steal his look!" He had deliberately put more cheese into that delivery than a deep-dish pizza, but it wasn't exactly untrue. When they both went through wrestling school together, Ryan was one of the first people to show Bronson the ropes (pun intended). However, the former took less-than-subtle inspiration from his blue colleague once they parted ways. The only noticeable difference between their gimmicks, besides the clashing colors, was that Ryan had also dyed his hair white. Unfortunately for him, this made him an easy target for the first step of the act: the promo.

Ryan leaned elbows-first on the rope, casually putting a microphone of his own to his lips. "They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, blue boy."

"You're as good an imitation of Big Blue as a flaming bag of dog crap is of the Mona Lisa. I had half a mind to not even fight a small fry like you tonight, but I've already whipped the whole lot backstage, and the Cerulean Savage doesn't even take //his own// sloppy seconds!"

Ryan's face grew a brighter red than his maroon spandex. Bronson had to let him get a word or two in, a feud was only as good as its snappy back-and-forth banter. "Big talk for a grown man in makeup. You talk about your look like you've got it copyrighted, but everyone knows the only people who dress like you are teenage girls, and clowns."

//Jeez, that's all you got?// Bronson thought. "Yeah, I might be a clown. But I'm about to whoop your ass, and there's not gonna be anything funny about it."

Bronson put every fiber of his being into that match, and it was a spectacular one. He twisted and flew with all the agility of a gymnast, riled the crowd with showstopping poses, and beat and bludgeoned his opponent with a makeshift armory of tables, ladders, and chairs. When he and Ryan collided clothesline to clothesline, knocking both men to the ground, the blow shook the ring to the rabid cheers of the crowd, and when the two men rallied back to their feet, they screamed even louder.

By the climax of the match, Ryan was huffing and puffing, his red face turned purple, as he did his best to match the boundless energy of his blue coworker. Bronson, on the other, was having so much fun that he almost forgot about the ending when it came.

The red and blue rivals had practiced this maneuver all day the day before. Bronson Blue climbed to the top rope, ready to deliver an elbow drop to his opponent on the ground. The more agile Red Ryan sprung to his feet, and leapt up to deliver a kick to Blue's temple with a crisp //snap// that rang through the room to the //ooo//'s of second-hand pain by the crowd. As Bronson slumped to a seated position on the top turnbuckle, Ryan climbed to meet him, and hooked his legs over his shoulders as he prepared to launch him into the ring with a hurricanrana. At the last second, Bronson regained his strength, and gripped onto his opponent's legs. He would lift Ryan high into the air, just long enough for the crowd to gasp in anticipation, before leaping to the ground to deliver a seated powerbomb, his signature "Blue Bomb," from the top rope and close the match.

Except...

At the moment before the two men were to jump to the ground, Bronson's heart stopped as he heard a metallic creak, and a shift below his feet as the top turnbuckle gave way. With his hands occupied, he couldn't steady himself, and his balance failed as he careened to the outside of the ring. In that moment, the split second between the fall and landing, all he could think of was his opponent. Red Ryan, despite the smack talk made to make them seem like enemies, was a friend, and Bronson wouldn't let him get hurt on a botched move. He twisted in the air to break Ryan's fall, taking the full force of both men falling as he crashed into the ground with a painful //crunch.//

The next moments came to Bronson in snippets through a fog. First, a pair of hands reaching down towards him. //The doctor, maybe?// Then, himself being rolled into the ring. Feeling the tremor in his back from the referee smacking the ground one, two, and three times. And finally, looking up at Red Ryan, and at the referee holding his hand high. The last thought that went through Bronson's mind as his vision went black was, //This wasn't in the script...//

------

Five years later, Bronson Bluetarch was a customer service associate suffering through his 9 to 5. Bored to the point of nearly sleeping at his cubicle, he flicked the "Macho Man" Randy Savage bobblehead on his desk as he waited for the next call, which of course came through in the last few seconds before his lunch break. "Hello, this is Bronson with the McAllister Diaper Corporation, how can I help you today?"

After the mother on the end of the line finished grilling him about why the discount codes on her three-month-expired coupons weren't working, Bronson slogged down the gray halls to the break room, favoring his leg which was broken in five places as many years ago to the day. He spent about a third of his hourly wages on the overpriced pistachios in the company vending machine and sank into the fifteen-year-old couch on the far end of the room. He stretched out and felt every joint in his upper body crackle and pop as he relieved the tension from hunching over a computer all day, which he almost regretted since the soreness in his back was one of the only things that distracted him from the pain running up and down the entire right side of his body from nerve damage.

He grabbed a drink from the water cooler and swigged it down with a handful of painkillers. They didn't do much, but the prescription was the only consolation prize he got from his doctor after the last ditch effort to fix his leg failed. //You should consider yourself lucky//, his doctor had said. //You could have been paralyzed from the waist down.//

//At least I'd have one of the good parking spots,// Bronson thought, as he finished his cup half empty. No, lucky would be one of his four surgeries saving his career. Lucky would be hearing people chant his name again. Forget the WWE, if Bronson could lace his boots and walk out to a half-full community center one last time, he would consider that lucky too.

The TV in the corner of the ceiling, flickering with static but still somewhat comprehensible, was tuned to USA Today as Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie went live. "Today we have a very special guest. You might know him as a world-renowned wrestling superstar, but today, he joins us as an author. Please welcome WWE superstar, Red Ryan, here to tell us more about his new memoir, //Turning Red: How You Too Can Be A Champion//!"

Bronson spat out his mouthful of stale pistachios. "Oh what the hell!" He scowled and averted his eyes from the tv. The last thing he needed today was to see that burgundy backstabber's face. "Somebody turn this crap off."

"I hear ya, big guy," Jimson chirped from the other end of the room. "Wrestling's fake anyways, can't they get a real athlete?"

"It's not fake," Bronson grumbled under his breath. "It's choreographed."

"What was that?"

"Forget it."

When his fifteen minutes were up, Bronson limped back to his cubicle. This was his rock bottom. But he had to keep his chin up; today was a good day, after all. Later today, he was going to finally get a promotion to senior customer service associate!

...Of a diaper company. It certainly wasn't anything fancy, but this was going to be his first big win in five years, and he needed it to make this monotonous desk job just a little more bearable. It even came with an office, and a desk not made of faux wood!

A caller was already on the line for him before he sat down. Great. He cleared his throat. "Hello, this is Bronson with McA––."

"Bronson Blue!" an eccentric voice echoed from the other end of the line, so loud Bronson recoiled from the phone. "As I live and breathe!"

If the stranger on the phone were there, he would see Bronson's eyes narrow at the mention of a ring name not mentioned for half a decade. "Who is this?"

"Oh, just an entrepreneur looking to hire. Say, Blue, how's the desk jockey life treating you?"

"Sir, this is a call center––."

"For a diaper company," the voice interrupted. "Yes, I've heard. So much wasted talent, all up in smoke because of a loose turnbuckle. But it's great to see your old friend Red Ryan is doing wonderful these days!"

Anger flashed over Bronson's face. "Shut up."

"Tsk tsk tsk, I hope you didn't lose your trash talk with your leg, crowd work's a big part of the game."

By this point, cautious eyes and ears peered through the cubicle to listen in as the discussion heated up, but Bronson didn't care. "Listen up, I don't know who this is, but I'm about five seconds from shoving my size thirteen penny loafers through the phone and up your ass!"

"That's more like it. But before you do that, I have a question: are you happy?"

Bronson furrowed his brow at the stranger's change in tone. "What's it to you?"

"Let's have a proper chat," the voice said. A hand gripped the back of Bronson's swivel chair and spun him around. "Face to face." The man who moments ago was on the other end of the phone line stood before Bronson as a lean, wiry man in a flashy red and gold tailcoat. He looked Greek, with jet black hair that blended into the shadow cast by his mountainous top hat, brown eyes and an olive complexion. Looking him up and down, Bronson thought he looked like a circus ringmaster, the weirdness of his sudden appearance almost matched by how strangely he contrasted with the dull, gray hexacomb of cubicles they were inside of.

"What the hell is this?" Bronson exclaimed, his question more toned like a statement since he simply didn't know what else to say after this stranger seemingly teleported over the phone line.

"A humble businessman, here with a proposition." The man bowed, and extended his hand. "Ares, at your service, with the deal of a lifetime."

"Ares?" Bronson cocked his brow. "As in, the god of fighting?"

"The god of //war//, thank you very much, but yes, that by extension." He flicked Bronson's forehead, causing him to flinch. "My, my, you really didn't pay attention in school, did you? No wonder this was your fallback."

"Uh-huh. Right." He looked at the office around him. "Okay, funny prank everyone."

What few eyes acknowledged him ignored the strange man before him entirely, and instead seemed to focus on Bronson as if he was the weird one.

"They can't see me. As far as they know, you're just a schizophrenic oddball."

"Riiiiight." Bronson was still sure he was being pranked, and that all the passersby ignoring the ringmaster were in on it. But he'd play along. Whether the joke was on him or not, he'd take any excuse not to pick up that phone again for however long he could get away with it. "Y'know, I don't mean to brag, but I've watched Percy Jackson once, and I'm pretty sure you don't look like Ares."

The man straightened up and looked down at Bronson, bemused. "What, would you rather I look like this?" A column of fire erupted from under his feet, and pitch black shadows threw themselves across the room, casting everything in darkness but the cubicle left alight from the burning man. The embers cleared, and a monstrous figure towered over Bronson, nearly fifteen feet tall. He was clad in archaic black armor, its ornate carvings scarred by deep cuts. The top hat was now swapped for an equally black Spartan helm, illuminated by a crimson glow from within the man's eyes. "Better?" The creature's now deep, booming voice sent shivers down Bronson's spine, sending him out of his chair and sprawling over the floor in a panic. The shadows cleared, yet Bronson's dozens of coworkers, now all popping out of their cubicles like gophers, looked only at him with mixes of confusion and fear, completely ignoring the gargantuan newcomer whose head was nearly bursting through the ceiling.

"What. Wha–– How are––. What are you!?" Bronson sputtered from the ground.

"This look is a little gratuitous for my taste." In a second, more mild column of fire, the monster shrank back down into the Greek ringmaster, its armor seeming to liquify into molten iron as black metal morphed into the rippling, bright red fabric of his tailcoat. "And to answer your question––." He leaned down and grabbed Bronson's hand in both of his. "I'm a fan!"

"...Excuse me?"

"A little known fact about the god of war: I LOVE violence." His expression shifted to a cartoonishly proportioned frown as he slumped down on Bronson's desk. "But modern warfare is just so //boring//. Medical evacs, drones, the //Geneva Convention//," he said in a nasally, mocking tone. "Whatever happened to fighting for fighting's sake? But wrestling? The pageantry, the physicality, the merciless, cartoonish ruthlessness! I haven't had this much fun since Vespasian built the Colosseum!"

"So... what do you want with me?"

The god's grin widened. "I want you to bring wrestling to life. I don't mean in the kayfabe, making it //look// real way. I mean kicking ass, taking names, and kissing babies 24/7 in real life! I want you, Bronson Blue, to be my herald."

"Why me? I can't ever step foot in a ring again, I lost that part of me five years ago. And if you love wrestling so much, why don't you do it yourself?"

"Well, to answer your second question, because I'm not a warrior; I'm the god //of// war. If I can't get other people to fight, I'm not doing my job. And your first? I've watched a lot of great wrestlers over the years. Bruno Samartino, The Undertaker, Sting..." He flicks the bobblehead on the desk. "Randy Savage. They were all wonderful servants. But you? You were GREAT! But you never got to be //one of// the greats, did you? That's why I want you––because you still have so much to prove."

As Ares waved his hands through the air, Bronson's computer flickered to life. Bluetarch squinted, and saw a video taken from above; a god's-eye-view of his very first match. He had only just begun working out months before this, and was still in high school. He hardly could have recognized his teenage self locking an old opponent in a headlock if not for the purple gym shorts and blue eyeshadow he used for his first-ever costume. The god of war waved his hand once again, and more videos––these disembodied from any screen, but suspended in the air as glowing, floating rectangles––popped up throughout the office. Bronson watched himself win his first tag team match, and suffer his first loss. He saw himself learning how to fake a fall in wrestling school, and stitching together costumes by hand. He saw himself giving high fives to hundreds of different fans old and young, and he heard the first time they chanted "Bronson Blue" in unison. And through the chaos of his memories, he spotted the smallest screen of all, hidden in the mix: When his mom made him a construction paper championship belt for his fourth Halloween, with "World's Best Son" scribbled across the front in marker.

The god of war placed a hand on Bronson's shoulder. "I can give it all back. You can be a winner again."

Bronson stood up and took it all in. The stares of his oblivious co-workers had by this point disappeared as they faded back into their regular work. He brushed back a tear as it welled in his eye. "What's the catch?"

The god of war stroked his chin. "When I say 24/7, I mean 24/7. You'll be everything you ever pretended to be, given flesh. Take that however you will."

Bronson steadied himself against his desk. "I'm not sure I need that kind of help."

"Very well." Ares snapped his fingers, and all the screens flickered out around them. "I'll get out of your hair, but we'll be in touch soon. Just say the word when you miss winning, Mr. Bluetarch." With a snap of his fingers, he vanished into a puff of smoke. Bronson finally became aware of the mess the god of war made of his workspace and set to piecing it back together.

------

At 5 o'clock, the entire office filed out of their cubicles and into the break room for their nightly company announcements. Their manager, a man somehow younger than most of the people in the room, snapped his fingers in the air to get their attention.

"Alright everybody, good work today. We scored twelve more help tickets than yesterday, so give yourselves all a pat on the back!"

They clapped with all the energy of a roomful of people there against their will.

"Before we break for the night, I only have one announcement. As you all know, with Aaron's retiring last week, there's a vacancy for a new senior customer service representative! And although you've all been doing spectacularly––except for whichever one of you put fish in the microwave last week, I haven't forgotten––I think we all saw this choice coming."

Bronson beamed with pride. At least something was finally going right. His life wasn't perfect, and sure, he wasn't even proud of where he wound up. But his life was his, and he wouldn't sell his soul to any monster, demon, or pagan god to fix it. He cleared his throat. "Thank y–."

"Jimson, come on up here!"

The office broke out into a more enthusiastic clap as Jimson bounced on his feet up to the manager, waving with a toothy smile so big he nearly had to close his eyes. He had been with the office for not even three months, and Bronson was told to his face that this promotion was his.

The manager, finally done giving Jimson a hug and handshake, turned and spotted Bronson in the crowd. "Hey, don't look so glum Bluetarch! I bet you'll get it next time!"

Bronson narrowed his eyes and walked wordlessly out of the room.

"Hey, come back!" the manager called from behind. "We're having pizza bagels after!"

He wasn't sure what he hated more at the moment, his manager, or the pain radiating up his bum leg as he retreated from the room.

"Can you pick them up?"

//Well//, Bronson thought. //That decides it.//

He felt a sharp migraine coming on, so strong it overpowered the shocks going through his leg as he powerwalked his way to his cubicle. He slumped down in his chair, but he now, seemingly for the first time, noticed a lump in the lumbar area. He tried to pat it down, to raise and lower the chair, stand it just right on its aged, crooked wheels, but nothing made it feel right. That mild discomfort was just enough to send him over the edge. He launched to his feet, gripped the chair by the handles, and hurled it with everything he had. He watched it sink into a cubicle three spots down like a basketball. Thankfully, no one was around to see his outburst, they were all still in the break room enjoying the manager's discount party snacks. But the rage didn't stop. He hated that stupid chair, and this stupid company, and their stupid budget cuts, and his stupid manager, and, more than anything at that moment, he hated his stupid self. //What happened to me?//

He swiped his arm across his desk, sending papers flying in a whirlwind. Several black sheets froze in the air, and began to fold themselves. Bronson couldn't tell if perhaps he had just //really// snapped and was hallucinating, but before he could decide what rubber room to lock himself in, the paper had origami'd itself into a miniature top hat and floated on top of his computer. The desktop–the least outdated part of this office, but still over a decade old–beeped, whirred, and glitched to life. Blocky text formed over the screen:

= **##1EB5E8|HOW ABOUT NOW?##**
= **##1EB5E8|YES/NO##**

"Do it," Bronson muttered, less to the computer than to the room as a whole.

He heard the snap of invisible fingers, and felt what seemed like a jolt of lightning up his spine. His mind swam with dopamine, as the rush of competition returned to him tenfold. His skin stretched and twisted like rubber as his muscles, which had atrophied for five years, swelled so much he thought they might burst, and before he even realized he was growing, he found himself towering high over the cubicle walls. And in the heat of the moment, he barely noticed–or cared–as his skin turned an overwhelming, bright blue.

------

Moments later, the door to the break room splintered off its hinges as a pudgy shape flew through it. The startled officegoers recognized the projectile as Ron, their accountant, as he slid to a stop on the other end of the room. They hardly had enough time to wonder what had happened to him, as their collective attention shifted to a series of deafening crashes approaching them.

A massive blue figure smashed through the wall of the nearest cubicle. The entire network of claustrophobic workspaces folded behind him like beige dominoes. Despite the man's hulking frame, elongated posture, and newly bulbous nose, most quickly recognized Bronson's face fixed in a wild grin.

He stomped his shattered leg at a wide angle, standing like a sumo wrestler as he felt it crackle, pop, and finally heal, stronger than it had ever been before, and grinned wide through his purple goatee. He threw back his head and stood tall, overcome with the rush of being a winner once again, and bellowed the most enthusiastic "OH YEAH!" since the Kool-Aid Man first broke the brick ceiling in 1978.

The manager shared the same look of shock as everyone else in the room. "Mr. Bluetarch, what are you doing?"

The newly formed, large, blue Randy Savage lookalike pointed a stern finger. "That's Mr. Blue to you! Yeah, Mr. Blue, me likey the sound a' that." He shifted through different bodybuilding poses as he spoke––first a front lat spread, then a double bicep curl, then a side chest. "The Lapiz Leviathan doesn't know //how// he got here, but he's pretty sure he came to do two things! Take home the gold, and kick the crap outta this diaper factory! Now who's first?"

Wisely, no one stepped forward.

"You diaper dealers think you've got safety in numbers, but The Champ is right at home in a battle royale! Oh yeah!" He grabbed the tv remote and changed the channel from Red Ryan's interview, which had just returned from a commercial break, to //Rocky III//. As if on queue, the Italian Stallion was just beginning his iconic montage scene, and the Cerulian Savage maxed out the volume as "Eye of the Tiger" began blasting from the screen's side speakers.

Carnage ensued as Mr. Blue grabbed his next two victims by the collars of their short-sleeved button-downs and smashed them together. He descended on the crowd of panicking customer service representatives in a tornado of punches, kicks, and suplexes, and devastating elbow drops on anybody unfortunate enough to be caught trying to crawl away. Two of them he stuffed in the refrigerator, and, against all laws of physics, one he even fit in the freezer.

He grabbed Jerry from HR, and gave him a back body drop through the coffee table. John, Steve, and Reed he piled underneath the couch, before jumping up and down on it like Tom Cruise on //The Oprah Winfrey Show//. He splashed a pot of coffee on Matthew, the assistant manager's, face. It went cold half an hour ago, of course, but Matthew wasn't about to let him know that. "Uhhh... Ah! Sweet mercy!" Matthew yelled as he sank to his knees, peeking between his fingers as Blue moved on and put his next target in a sharpshooter. He let out a sigh of relief, which was cut short by Blue squishing him with an elbow drop.

On the other side of the room, the manager tiptoed around the carnage, inching his way towards the door. He dove out of the way, facedown, as Kieran from HR soared over his head, smashing through the window to the next room. He peeked up through his fingers to see Blue towering over him, with an ever-widening grin on his face. The manager leaped away and began crawling on his back. He threw on his finest faux smile and spoke through jittering teeth. "Oh, Bluetarch! I //love// the new look. It's not really our workwear policy, but–." Blue cracked his knuckles, and the manager began talking faster. "–b-b-but, uh, it really suits you and we can make an exception! Look, the promotion was nothing personal! You'll get another shot real soon, we've got a //bunch// of layoffs coming next month, and–and..."

The manager's shoulders hit a wall. The smile faded from his face and was replaced by the toughest look he could muster. "Bronson, don't touch me or... uh... or you're fired!"

"I am on fire, The Champ thanks you!" Blue grabbed the manager by the ankle with his frying pan-sized mitts, and whirled him overhead like a t-shirt at a rave, before sending him flying into the next room and careening into the copy machine. Mr. Blue sauntered over and eyed the archaic equipment with creative glee. He grabbed the manager by the scruff of his neck, opened the copier, and slammed him facedown once, twice, thrice, and other words for four, five, and six times which the Blue Bomber didn't have in his vocabulary. The copier responded to the face smushed against it with a mechanical //ding// and glowed, printing out images of the manager's pained, flattened expressions with each blow. The machine smoked and collapsed right after it printed the last of the veritable mountain of his clobbered likeness.

Mr. Blue snapped his fingers and pointed to the last man standing: Jimson.

The newly christened senior customer service associate backed away as a look of stark terror overtook his face. "Hey man, come on... Look, I think you deserved that promotion too! I'm sorry for blaming you for putting fish in the microwave!" He scrambled for words that failed to come before Mr. Blue scooped him up and made a Jimson-sized hole in the ceiling.

By the time the police arrived, they found only a broken pile of Bluetarch's sore, if still very much alive, former coworkers, and reported two stolen items: The manager's "World's Best Boss" mug, and Jimson's new desk.

------

A week later, Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie spun their chairs in unison to face a live camera, Red Ryan again sitting between them, this time with a pristine new title belt over his shoulder. Three flavors of Slim Jims––honey barbecue, tabasco, and original––were lined up perfectly parallel to one another next to his water. He glanced down at the junk food out of the corner of his eye with disdain. It was bad enough that the marketing boys made him do their commercials. Now, they were invading his interviews too.

//No matter.// He thought. //I'll find a// real //sponsor now that I'm the champ.// He hid the grimace inside behind his most camera-worthy smile.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning into USA Today. I'm Matt Lauer..."

"And I'm Savannah Guthrie."

"And today, we are again thrilled to be joined by Red Ryan, now not only a bestselling author, but, since the last time we spoke, the newest WWE champion!"

The hosts waited expectantly, but Ryan missed his line. Instead, he stared off in the distance, confused as to why nobody else seemed to notice the odd man in a red tailcoat, filming them from where the cameraman had just stood a moment before.

Transfixed in his gaze, he didn't even notice the grinning, blue silhouette looming over him, as the teleprompter read in big, bold letters:

= **[[size larger]]##1EB5E8|OH YEAH##[[/size]]**

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