Post by Eden on Feb 11, 2023 23:06:07 GMT -5
It had certainly been an unforeseen crash, that WWH comeback, Eden thought as she jogged down the sandspit beach of the abandoned Humbolt Island at dawn. They had been sustaining the shows' ratings. The roster had been slim, but that could've been an opportunity to introduce new viewers to a less intimidatingly-large cast across their whole programming.
Then boom.-- the sale from the Hart family to Angelica had been frozen by the government, who had launched an active investigation into the Harts and everything that had gone on within WWH walls. And, predictably, at least for her, it had started with the conditions at Sanatorium.
Taking in inmates with mental illnesses meant being contractually beholden to the California Department of Corrections. And that might have brought government money into the system, but boy, the Harts had seemed to totally underestimate in turn how much they'd be held to standards. Had they just believed in the power of corruption that hard? Corruption happened, inevitably, but political regimes changed just as inevitably. And when they did, it always made a great show to trot out the last regime's dirty laundry. Eden knew that from history, but it'd all been excruciatingly easy to prove in court in the modern age when most of it was on the internet forever. Maybe the Harts had simply been new-money enough to cash in on the attention their terrible practices drew during the long collecting-of-evidence process. That the government would be slow might as well be the third of those Pillars of Inevitability.
She chided herself for slowing her jog while she'd been mentally combing over the tired situation yet another time. The limbo the company and properties were all held in would end only when the government said it would. Her phone bleeping for her attention just gave her extra motivation to drop the thought process, though it also gave her an excuse out of her cardio too. She dropped on a log, sliding her phone out of its arm case and unlocking it with her fingerprint and remembering a time she'd have ignored a dozen of these at least on a morning run. She wasn't as popular as she'd once been, but when that popularity came with the weight of keeping a whole media company running, it didn't feel like it had ever been about her at all.
She could tell who the text was from before she even read it, just by how fucking long it was. He was terrible at getting to his points.
Hearing concluded. Harts are fucked, profits seized, barred from continuing to do business and the company's to be sold to pay fines and legal fees. You know if we don't show up first someone will either break everything down like scrap cars or use it as a puppet parody of itself. Have you contacted Them?
She hadn't. She'd assumed this would take longer. "Fuck," rang out over the crashing of the morning waves. It was time to go back to Sanatorium.
The buildings of Isle had been sun-battered and unkempt in its open space exposed to the elements, but the city hulking around Sanatorium hadn't exactly protected the building either. Sanatorium had always been a musty place. That, plus the city sludge, plus time, meant when Eden opened the back door for the first time in ages? The dank wave of air that smacked her in the face with a triple-team smell-feel-taste assault was so like something that should've been coming out of a sewer line that she felt like she needed a red wig and a yellow jumpsuit with a microphone for this endeavor. And while documenting this would've made for future good tv, this was not something that could be leaked. When her business partner had suggested forging this deal in order to bring enough money and people to the table to make WWH operational, she'd flinched.
Nobody knew what had become of the Dark Order of the Soulless since the lights of Dystopia had shut off for the last time, since Sanatorium had shuttered its doors and its inhabitants had either been released or shuffled to different facilities. But she knew where they were lurking. From what she knew of the beliefs of those who ascribed to witchery of some flavor, the ground where emotional turmoil had been endured was tainted. Where physical hardship had been inflicted, the stones of a building would hold that. And with water running underneath, like the underwater river that had been found when the city had come in to try to patch a gas leak, there was an emotional bloodstream of Mother Earth here. Allegedly. Eden didn't necessarily believe in anything, despite the weirdness she'd experienced coming here, despite what had... happened to her that dark night when she'd temporarily died...
But the surge of adrenaline she felt was the same whether the danger was real or imagined. And it'd never be entirely imaginary when you were intruding upon professional wrestlers as someone who was but a novice in the art herself. "Dark... Order? Of the Soulless?" Sigh. She was here beckoning the damned from a humid crypt of a cement building in order to enter into a dark partnership together to keep a megacorporation afloat, but damn if she didn't sound like she was tentatively introducing the latest band to put up their flyers in a Hot Topic. "Anybody got Gary Black's cell phone number in here? I have a proposition he might be interested in." There. She still felt like she was talking to an empty building, but at least she didn't sound spineless. Then something tapped her on the shoulder.
"You rang, Miss?"
Eden about jumped out of her socks. It was a Soulless One. They all looked... kind of similar to her. "Yes. I need to speak to your leader. This isn't some little situation, this is 'can we save WWH' level stuff, so..."
“I see, Miss DuBois. Mister Black was starting to wonder if someone was going to call about this. He can be here in two days time. If you need to talk to him prior to that, here is his personal cell.”
The Soulless One handed her a piece of paper. Eden took it, cringing and mouthing two days to herself. Contact with these people made her uneasy. "Two days? Leader of the Order decided to vacation up in Oregon wine country... or Hell...?" Her joke pretty well landed flat.
“If you must know, Miss DuBois. He was in Boston, Massachusetts handling some business there.” says The Soulless One.
"Boston, wow, maybe you guys are sending some little Soulless graduates to the Ivy Leagues up there? Soulless society parties... I'll stop, okay." She took the strip of paper and out came her phone again. She, unlike some people, would actually call on actual multi million dollar arrangements. This was going down in her mental collection of weirdest moments in the wrestling industry. Number jabbed, and the phone rang. After about one or two rings, a slightly familiar voice is heard.
“Gary Black, speaking. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
"Hey, Gary, this is Eden." Despite the weirdness, her autopilot phone business reflexes kicked in and that much at least spilled out.
“Eden DuBois?! Well aren’t you a familiar voice. What can I do for you?” They had, at least, managed to make a personal connection as coworkers. Gary had always been a logical brain in the madness of Sanatorium. She had no idea why or how he wound up the leader of a cult, but....
"I'm trying to buy WWH. The investigative committee just ruled it's to be sold to pay their fines for a list of white collar crimes that would probably take a whole tree's worth of paper to list off. It's going to be a big number. I have an inheritance..." Oh God, saying you had money was one of those... well, it'd be a faux pas socially, but here it was a big old target on her back. "But not enough alone. I've got enough between my side and a financier for half, though. If it's sold, you know they'll dismantle it and sell it for parts or... who knows who would wind up at the wheel."
“I see. You can count me in, Eden. We can talk about the numbers and whatnot, in person if that’ll be easier. So, which brand would you like to handle?” says Gary quite bluntly.
"Honey, we've gotta see what kind of a roster we can actually put together after so long. And obviously, Sanatorium isn't going to be able to run the same as before. Let's talk numbers, make the bid before it goes to open market, and maybe reach out to some of the wrestlers to see if they want to come back. We can't do this without talent. I might be able to politic Sanatorium back around as a public service sentencing option for unruly wrestlers after this, but I doubt we're going to have 'em on lockdown anymore after all this scandal." Which was honestly a massive improvement in her book.
“Of course. Can’t have a promotion without the talent to back it up. As I would think the Soulless One stated, I can be there in two days. I take you're on the Isle. Probably taking in some Sun and whatnot,” said Gary rather sharply.
“But we can certainly take more in depth, once I get there of course. If you need anything from me prior, don’t be afraid to call,” said Gary once more quite bluntly.
"Yep," she confirmed with a grimace at knowing how easily her behavior was guessed. Business was a minefield of headgames and the Soulless were a hell of a chess partner. "I'll be around. And I'll have my people draw up papers for an offer as fast as humanly possible. Though if you've got the supernatural hookup... forget I said that. Let's start knocking the dust off things and straightening stuff up for business, as much as we can legally right now. We're gonna need some manual labor people, and some security once things start rolling. Which was the other part of this partnership I was hoping you could come in clutch with. I know you've got people." If they still counted as people when they had no souls?
“Of course. It’s quite alright, Eden. I know it seems strange how we are able to do some of the things we do. Especially in terms of what many perceive as reality. I can see what I can do. Have you tried reaching out to Mister Quinn about security matters, Eden? I’m sure he’d be willing to help in that regard. But for the manual labor stuff, I can do that.”
"Good idea there. Yeah... I'm going to go back to the island and map out a plan. There's so much to do. Keep in touch on your end too, alright?" Her head was spinning. This might actually happen.
“Of course. You can count on me to handle business like that. See you in two days.”
The call disconnected. Hopefully she hadn't just sold her own soul.
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Then boom.-- the sale from the Hart family to Angelica had been frozen by the government, who had launched an active investigation into the Harts and everything that had gone on within WWH walls. And, predictably, at least for her, it had started with the conditions at Sanatorium.
Taking in inmates with mental illnesses meant being contractually beholden to the California Department of Corrections. And that might have brought government money into the system, but boy, the Harts had seemed to totally underestimate in turn how much they'd be held to standards. Had they just believed in the power of corruption that hard? Corruption happened, inevitably, but political regimes changed just as inevitably. And when they did, it always made a great show to trot out the last regime's dirty laundry. Eden knew that from history, but it'd all been excruciatingly easy to prove in court in the modern age when most of it was on the internet forever. Maybe the Harts had simply been new-money enough to cash in on the attention their terrible practices drew during the long collecting-of-evidence process. That the government would be slow might as well be the third of those Pillars of Inevitability.
She chided herself for slowing her jog while she'd been mentally combing over the tired situation yet another time. The limbo the company and properties were all held in would end only when the government said it would. Her phone bleeping for her attention just gave her extra motivation to drop the thought process, though it also gave her an excuse out of her cardio too. She dropped on a log, sliding her phone out of its arm case and unlocking it with her fingerprint and remembering a time she'd have ignored a dozen of these at least on a morning run. She wasn't as popular as she'd once been, but when that popularity came with the weight of keeping a whole media company running, it didn't feel like it had ever been about her at all.
She could tell who the text was from before she even read it, just by how fucking long it was. He was terrible at getting to his points.
Hearing concluded. Harts are fucked, profits seized, barred from continuing to do business and the company's to be sold to pay fines and legal fees. You know if we don't show up first someone will either break everything down like scrap cars or use it as a puppet parody of itself. Have you contacted Them?
She hadn't. She'd assumed this would take longer. "Fuck," rang out over the crashing of the morning waves. It was time to go back to Sanatorium.
The buildings of Isle had been sun-battered and unkempt in its open space exposed to the elements, but the city hulking around Sanatorium hadn't exactly protected the building either. Sanatorium had always been a musty place. That, plus the city sludge, plus time, meant when Eden opened the back door for the first time in ages? The dank wave of air that smacked her in the face with a triple-team smell-feel-taste assault was so like something that should've been coming out of a sewer line that she felt like she needed a red wig and a yellow jumpsuit with a microphone for this endeavor. And while documenting this would've made for future good tv, this was not something that could be leaked. When her business partner had suggested forging this deal in order to bring enough money and people to the table to make WWH operational, she'd flinched.
Nobody knew what had become of the Dark Order of the Soulless since the lights of Dystopia had shut off for the last time, since Sanatorium had shuttered its doors and its inhabitants had either been released or shuffled to different facilities. But she knew where they were lurking. From what she knew of the beliefs of those who ascribed to witchery of some flavor, the ground where emotional turmoil had been endured was tainted. Where physical hardship had been inflicted, the stones of a building would hold that. And with water running underneath, like the underwater river that had been found when the city had come in to try to patch a gas leak, there was an emotional bloodstream of Mother Earth here. Allegedly. Eden didn't necessarily believe in anything, despite the weirdness she'd experienced coming here, despite what had... happened to her that dark night when she'd temporarily died...
But the surge of adrenaline she felt was the same whether the danger was real or imagined. And it'd never be entirely imaginary when you were intruding upon professional wrestlers as someone who was but a novice in the art herself. "Dark... Order? Of the Soulless?" Sigh. She was here beckoning the damned from a humid crypt of a cement building in order to enter into a dark partnership together to keep a megacorporation afloat, but damn if she didn't sound like she was tentatively introducing the latest band to put up their flyers in a Hot Topic. "Anybody got Gary Black's cell phone number in here? I have a proposition he might be interested in." There. She still felt like she was talking to an empty building, but at least she didn't sound spineless. Then something tapped her on the shoulder.
"You rang, Miss?"
Eden about jumped out of her socks. It was a Soulless One. They all looked... kind of similar to her. "Yes. I need to speak to your leader. This isn't some little situation, this is 'can we save WWH' level stuff, so..."
“I see, Miss DuBois. Mister Black was starting to wonder if someone was going to call about this. He can be here in two days time. If you need to talk to him prior to that, here is his personal cell.”
The Soulless One handed her a piece of paper. Eden took it, cringing and mouthing two days to herself. Contact with these people made her uneasy. "Two days? Leader of the Order decided to vacation up in Oregon wine country... or Hell...?" Her joke pretty well landed flat.
“If you must know, Miss DuBois. He was in Boston, Massachusetts handling some business there.” says The Soulless One.
"Boston, wow, maybe you guys are sending some little Soulless graduates to the Ivy Leagues up there? Soulless society parties... I'll stop, okay." She took the strip of paper and out came her phone again. She, unlike some people, would actually call on actual multi million dollar arrangements. This was going down in her mental collection of weirdest moments in the wrestling industry. Number jabbed, and the phone rang. After about one or two rings, a slightly familiar voice is heard.
“Gary Black, speaking. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”
"Hey, Gary, this is Eden." Despite the weirdness, her autopilot phone business reflexes kicked in and that much at least spilled out.
“Eden DuBois?! Well aren’t you a familiar voice. What can I do for you?” They had, at least, managed to make a personal connection as coworkers. Gary had always been a logical brain in the madness of Sanatorium. She had no idea why or how he wound up the leader of a cult, but....
"I'm trying to buy WWH. The investigative committee just ruled it's to be sold to pay their fines for a list of white collar crimes that would probably take a whole tree's worth of paper to list off. It's going to be a big number. I have an inheritance..." Oh God, saying you had money was one of those... well, it'd be a faux pas socially, but here it was a big old target on her back. "But not enough alone. I've got enough between my side and a financier for half, though. If it's sold, you know they'll dismantle it and sell it for parts or... who knows who would wind up at the wheel."
“I see. You can count me in, Eden. We can talk about the numbers and whatnot, in person if that’ll be easier. So, which brand would you like to handle?” says Gary quite bluntly.
"Honey, we've gotta see what kind of a roster we can actually put together after so long. And obviously, Sanatorium isn't going to be able to run the same as before. Let's talk numbers, make the bid before it goes to open market, and maybe reach out to some of the wrestlers to see if they want to come back. We can't do this without talent. I might be able to politic Sanatorium back around as a public service sentencing option for unruly wrestlers after this, but I doubt we're going to have 'em on lockdown anymore after all this scandal." Which was honestly a massive improvement in her book.
“Of course. Can’t have a promotion without the talent to back it up. As I would think the Soulless One stated, I can be there in two days. I take you're on the Isle. Probably taking in some Sun and whatnot,” said Gary rather sharply.
“But we can certainly take more in depth, once I get there of course. If you need anything from me prior, don’t be afraid to call,” said Gary once more quite bluntly.
"Yep," she confirmed with a grimace at knowing how easily her behavior was guessed. Business was a minefield of headgames and the Soulless were a hell of a chess partner. "I'll be around. And I'll have my people draw up papers for an offer as fast as humanly possible. Though if you've got the supernatural hookup... forget I said that. Let's start knocking the dust off things and straightening stuff up for business, as much as we can legally right now. We're gonna need some manual labor people, and some security once things start rolling. Which was the other part of this partnership I was hoping you could come in clutch with. I know you've got people." If they still counted as people when they had no souls?
“Of course. It’s quite alright, Eden. I know it seems strange how we are able to do some of the things we do. Especially in terms of what many perceive as reality. I can see what I can do. Have you tried reaching out to Mister Quinn about security matters, Eden? I’m sure he’d be willing to help in that regard. But for the manual labor stuff, I can do that.”
"Good idea there. Yeah... I'm going to go back to the island and map out a plan. There's so much to do. Keep in touch on your end too, alright?" Her head was spinning. This might actually happen.
“Of course. You can count on me to handle business like that. See you in two days.”
The call disconnected. Hopefully she hadn't just sold her own soul.
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