You're fading in to the passing sounds of the street. A cab ride home, and his mind is on work again. Overtime? Not if you're him.

"...Is that it?"

A brief sigh and a smile.

"I mean... are you done yet?

He turns to look at you directly. Sure of himself with every word. He's wearing black wind breaker, not the same outfit he wore this morning. He has this ethic and his drive.

"Everything you had to say to me. Every last fucking word... a bunch of crap. So let me ask you this question right now before we get too far ahead... That all? You got any of it left in you?"

"Sit down and listen. You're calling me out on a lot of things - that we've already been over. You're still beating these tired old drums about some imaginary thesaurus and broken arms. I've got to tell you babe, broken arms was so me three months ago. These days I'm suffocating people with steel chairs."

"As for my verbosity - hello? Didn't I have to explain to you the definition and origin of the word scapegoat?"

"Yet here you are quoting Shakespeare, as if the Charms haven't been doing that since number Three, and you're going to question my uniqueness? I almost hate to be the one to tell you this, but I've already exposed this part of you. All you've done since you've been back here is sit in your room with your books and claim to know it all, when in reality every word you speak is stolen from someone else's page. Every act of your career a piece of someone else's."

"But let's talk about that, since you seem to think you've come into this federation with so much credibility and history to your name. At the last fall from grace, you retired a Charm. What you didn't retire, was THE Charm. You didn't beat the brightest star of the community. You didn't end the finest song. You didn't even do it in the main event of the night. You came in and you won a match against an Abercrombie reject who just never found his place. He was being groomed to be something, but he never was."

"Case in point - that's your title that you hold higher than any I can attain? A match with Twenty-One? How ironic, since this has been your career. Putting your name next to someone else's to garner attention. You come in fighting for Styx, you brood about Ice and you tag with Gabrielle or the Brutal. You marry November and run with Marcus Collins. You try to upstage a duet with Shawn Twilight at the pre card. Joshua Roe... Jamie Williams... Ray Merrix... you've "earned the right" to snort in my direction because the company you've kept was high society?"

"You make a lot of assumptions. Let's make another. Let's assume that retiring Twenty-One was all that you wish it was... over three years ago. You think it means something in the here and now? As opposed to me - coming out here and making my own name in the shape that I want it to be?"

"I've been working my fucking ass off to get where I am right now. You say I'm seventy miles below you, but for the love of Christ get over yourself. Every mother fucking event I've wrestled at under this promotion's banner - I've been in the main event. You say I haven't accomplished anything? So did Tommy, I choked him out. Lisa had similar words for me, and I overcame her and half the locker room to take AOWF gold that you've never held - my first championship reign putting me at the top of a community where you've never been. My words aren't "flowery" as you so "eloquently" put it... they're brutal, harsh and cold. Only you slip away into la-la land when things get rough so you don't have to hear them. Sorry if I bore you, but my job is to entertain the ticket buyers. You get a free ride, and if you're too dumb to absorb it or too attention-deficit to have things register? Fuck off."

"The character that you play? Is nothing more than a snob who thinks she ranks a little bit higher because she was a part of this "history" that so many people want to talk about. But its like I said, you were a footnote in the careers of others. You were never at the forefront and you ran away before you could capitalize on it. Now you expect it to matter, but this isn't your era anymore. If you came back expecting the golden age of the AOWF, this is going to hit you really fucking hard. There's no more Collins to measure yourself with. No more MoA to fend off. The Charms are all politics and the fans are more fickle than ever."

"Which is why I'm right where I claim to be. The only one making any noise, any sense - and any remote amount of charisma in these trying times."

"You pinned me, and that's great for you. Something you can hold over some newbie's head in a few months when I'm federation and community champion while you're still clawing at my feet. Yeah, that's "real". Real fucking stupid if you think it means anything on the Eighth. I won't have your pussy of a husband whimpering in my corner instead of beating the shit out of you like its his job to do. I'll have a steel cage that I can use to do unspeakable acts of cruelty and beat you lifeless. But these are just more of my claims, right? Nothing out of fact?"

"You're an idiot. Indulge in it while you can."

"At least Lisa is owning up to some amount of responsibility for her shortcomings. She took an awful lot of time when all she really had to do was say "sorry, I fucked up just like Vicious said I would", but it still took some amount of balls to do it. Only just when you see that brief glimmer of sincerity, she tries to throw the responsibility at the bookers of all people. Fucking-A. Take the cards you're dealt and play them. I've been doing it since day one, while the rest of you trot along oblivious. You're perfectly willing to play by their rules so long as it means you and your husband get unjustified title shots, but the second you're forced to do some real work you just don't know how to adapt? You'd better learn to."

"Because this "character" that's consumed me is faster, hits harder, counters more, torques back with extreme prejudice and most of all - is a hell of a lot fucking smarter than the lot of you. I back it up, you ignore it. Whatever, make my job easy. But Angelica, nobody thinks you're an intellectual because you can put a Plato quote at the end of your interview. Sound bites don't sum up the whole, remember that before you try to remind us of how "worldly" you are. But what's ironic about that - something that any philosopher will tell you - is that Socrates was the real thinker of the two. Plato just wrote everything down."

"Its one thing to read the words on a page. Its another thing entirely to understand them."

The ride is over, he gets out and leaves you behind.