Heel Turn
A Mind to Win, Part 1
by therexster11, edited by my cousin
On a hot summer day on planet Hart, Jet Rexster tries to stay cool before he puts on a show. Trouble is, Jet’s boss can’t avoid running his mouth. It’s almost impossible for Jet to keep from getting heated.
On the little TV under the fluorescent lighting in his dressing room, Jet sees the President for life of the Galactic Wrestling Federation making an ass of himself again. “Scary” Tony came on the news to hype up Jet’s defense of the Championship title, and it turned into just another blunder in a man’s long, blundering career.
“Say again, Tony?” asked the TV news reporter. “I understand he’s your top performer.”
“He’s a hemorrhoid, Bill,” said Tony. “Just a pimple on my ass. A pain in the butt.”
Jet clenched his teeth and put five dents in his beer can.
“The egghead is gonna make a whipping boy out of Jet Rexster. It’s about time. That guy is always making us look bad!”
Tony’s face on the washed out TV screen became even blurrier. Sticky, amber suds crept down the TV and dripped on the floor. Jet’s beer can clattered on the floor.
“That’s funny, Tony,” Jet said to himself. “I’m always telling people the same thing about you.”
Jet leaned over the counter top he was sitting beside and caught his reflection in the mirror on the wall. He saw a man grimacing and squeezing his knuckles white. Jet took a deep breath and relaxed every muscle in his body.
The TV was still going. Before the program cut to commercial, he caught a snatch of Scary Tony laughing. Jet clenched his teeth all over again and started looking for another beer.
Then, he heard a whoosh of air and felt the summer come inside his air-conditioned hideaway. He turned to see his first mate, Sonia Jetster, closing the door with her butt, one hand holding a stack of pizza boxes, the other carrying a case of beer.
Jet forgot all about Tony and smiled.
She can lighten my load just by showing up, he thought. The timely beer refill doesn’t hurt, either.
“Is something wrong with you, Jet?” she asked.
“No way. Couldn’t be.”
Jet moved to take the pizza boxes from her and brushed against her waist. He hesitated. They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. Sonia bit her lip.
The unspoken words lingered in the air like heavy condensation. Jet swallowed and helped her put down the food. She smiled and both hearts in the room started beating normally again.
Before they could exchange one more word, there was a terrible crash from outside, like a giant can opener peeling apart a municipal water tower and throwing the filleted steel on the concrete below.
Jet left Sonia behind, dashing out of the dressing room and down the hallway which opens up to the sports entertainment arena proper. Outside, his suspicion was confirmed right away.
Lying between the wrestling ring and the stands, like a beached whale, was Jet’s ship, the Silver Eagle. It was a long, sleek thing, gunmetal gray and silver. The ship made a hissing sound and then a sound like suction cups being pulled away from glass. The big cargo door at the rear, its hydraulic seals released, eased down to the floor on extending pistons. The hijackers shot out as soon as there was room to and bolted in different directions.
Jet only sighed.
“I see right through you, Tony,” He said to himself. “The GWF’s damned joyriders won’t throw me off. I’ll deal with them later.”
Jet squeezed the narrow, white plastic bracelet around his wrist. It opened up like a clamshell to reveal a row of five identical, tiny square switches. Jet pressed them in a sequence completely obscure to any who might observe and the Eagle’s cargo door retracted.
He clicked the bracelet closed again. Sonia joined him and clicked her tongue.
“Joyriders, again?” she asked.
“Yep,” Jet said. “Like it fazed me the first time.”
“At least they gave you a custom job this time.”
“What do you mean?”
Sonia pointed to the side of the Silver Eagle where a brain was crudely spray painted.
“Cute,” Jet said. “Maybe I’ll play off of that when I trash talk lame brain in the ring.”
The pair walked back toward the dressing room, Sonia’s arm draped over Jet’s shoulder in playful sympathy.
As he turned the last corner, Jet froze. In front of the dressing room there was a dense group of people crowding the door.
The sound of someone trying to force the door open carried over the group’s chatter. Everyone was wearing Jet Rexster merchandise and the throng was mostly made up of women. Too late, Jet realized what was going on. He scrambled to scoot back around the corner.
“It’s him!”
“He’s really here!”
“Don’t let him get away!”
The crowd devolved into laughter and screams as they streamed toward Jet like a colony of gophers who realized they planned their picnic for the day of the falcon family reunion.
Before Jet could get away, he was mobbed on all sides. They were all asking questions at once, their words running together, illegible. They stroked his arms and shoved pictures in his face for him to sign. Some threatened to shove more than that in his face.
Jet managed to calm the crowd and give everyone their signatures before Sonia had to roll up her sleeves and discipline them. She did have to escort one or two of the friskier fans away.
Before Jet could give a thoughtful answer to the first question he was fielding, the intercom overhead crackled to life.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the show will begin shortly. Please find your seats and prepare for the most shocking spectacle in the entire galaxy!”
That was Jet’s cue to prepare for walk outs.
“Ladies, that call was for this gentleman,” He said. “Please! Excuse me.”
With Sonia’s help, he slipped away from the crowd, retrieved his champion’s belt from the dressing room, and made his way to the dark little room from which the superstars made their dramatic entrances.
Jet tried to relax on the creaky folding chair set out for him in the mouth of the tunnel to that center of the world, the squared circle.
He leaned back. Then he sat up straight. He crossed one leg over the other. Then he uncrossed his legs and folded his arms.
The chair was uncomfortable, to be sure, but there was something else. Something was off.
Scary Tony disliked the much-needed attitude Jet brought the galaxy. Tony disliked the fact that it was needed. Scary Tony’s idea of the GWF, of sports entertainment and governance, was a fossil.
Same with the GWF Joyriders. That trick was old hat. They couldn’t touch anything important in the Silver Eagle without getting fried. Jet let them earn their joyride, like all the other superstars, for the spectacle. The crowd used to be whipped into a frenzy at the sight of a performer’s signature ride marooned in the arena. Now, though, it barely raised any eyebrows.
All the GWF’s old tricks felt particularly phony tonight. It precipitated something new, Jet thought.
Before he could give it much thought, his opponent finally came around, just in time to do his walk out.
The man had a deeply lined face which grinned ear to ear. He was dressed all over in pink and gold tights with a glistening, over-sized foam brain on his head. There were little gold lightning bolts sticking out of it. He winked at Jet and did an exaggerated curtsy before disappearing through the curtains.
Jet rolled his eyes and went back to fidgeting. There wasn’t a thought in his head besides slamming “lame brain” into the canvas.
A couple of minutes passed and a producer with a chewed-up-looking clipboard ran over the last of the preflight checks with Jet.
Then it was time.
Jet put on his best smirk and threw aside the velvet curtains. The hard rock riffs of his signature song, a sentimental, old world favorite, played him out over the wail of the ecstatic crowd.
He only had the heart to showboat a little, but he found his tenacity by the time he reached ringside. Now was the time to show them what he was made of. Again.
Jet hefted himself over the ropes, grabbed the mic from the referee, and strode to the center of the ring in one continuous motion. His opponent was waiting for him there.
“I’ve been told they call you Brain Shock,” Jet said, the name spoken with extra disdain.
“Frankly, I am shocked. I’m shocked old Tony was blind enough to let you walk out of his office alive wearing that ridiculous getup. Well, maybe not that shocked.”
He spread his arms and turned in a circle to look at everyone in the stands, wiggling his fingers, gesturing for them to “turn it up.” They were going ballistic.
“Well, I see that you’re an up-and-comer, and I’ve always rooted for the underdog, but you’ve come up too far, too fast. This belt is mine, lame brain, and mine it will remain.”
Brain Shock suddenly let out a sharp cackle like a cat jumping on an untuned piano and jumping off double fast. It surprised Jet enough for him to allow the microphone to be snatched away.
“If you are done bloviating,” Brain Shock said. “These people came for a show.
The only one who’s blind is you, old Jet exhaust.
The only one whose reach has exceeded his grasp is you.”
Jet folded his arms and shook his head. He looked to the audience and shrugged his shoulders, stepping away from his opponent and gripping the top rope. He was bristling.
Brain Shock continued.
“We all know who you really mean. You’ve been putting these poor wrestling fans down for years with your thinly veiled insults. Well, no more! This thinking man is taking a stand for the common man today.”
The audience was unanimous. They were just about booing their lungs out. Jet was really smirking now, his mood lifted.
Then he heard a click and a distant whirring from underneath the turnbuckle beside him.
“You say you root for the underdog,” Brain Shock said.
The whirring grew closer and the booing started to die down as the turnbuckles folded open like Venus fly-traps.
“You’re mocking this institution. Holding it back.”
Brain Shock’s tone was somber now. Metal rods extended out of the turnbuckles and, themselves, unfolded like carnivorous plants. Jet’s grip on the top rope made his knuckles white, and to him it felt like time was slowing to a crawl.
The crowd was awash with more confusion than disdain.
“I’m not the only one who thinks you stink. The world sees Jet Rexster for who he really is. Who’s with me?”
Suddenly, there was a piercing shriek from inside Jet’s skull like a dentist’s tool scraping an aluminum can.
For just a moment, the crowd was dead silent. The sound Jet heard was gone and he gritted his teeth as it was replaced by a splitting headache. The crowd was uncouth again, but cheering and screaming louder than ever.
They threw themselves down stairs and climbed over one another to get off the stands as fast as lemmings being herded to their deaths.
The huge sound they were making straightened out into a harmonious, narrow thing, like an orchestra tuning up before a show.
They were one voice now, with one thing to say as they piled on security and broke through barriers to get to the ring, the island in the middle of the sea of bodies.
“Kill Jet Rexster!”
TO BE CONTINUED in The Wave