What felt like rust on the blade against the flabby underside of his chin suggested to Clancy that his attacker may have been less fortunate than himself.  Even in this time of grave danger, he couldn’t help but grin knowing that, in any other situation, it would’ve been he that was the better off of the two. 

"Don’t make a joke out of this, fat man."  Came the gruff, muffled voice of the attacker.

Clancy knew the voice instantly - "Reject…"

The cloaked grip of the attacker’s left arm cinched a little tighter under Clancy’s left arm and across his chest.  The knife in his right hand drew that bit closer to painting the parking lot red.

"Not a word, McClean.  You don’t know me.  Reject does not exist anymore.  I am just another of the hundreds you’ve misused, abused and toyed with throughout your illustrious career.  I don’t have a name, but you can call me whatever you want.  Call me boy.  Call me Seth Richards.  Call me What Money Can Buy.  Call me the former workforce of Ultimate Wrestling Underground now rotting away in corporation housing thanks to some very bad booking and business decisions on your part.  Call me whatever you see fit.  At this point, it doesn’t matter."

"What do you want?  Cash?  I have cash.  I’ll give you cash.  You want cash, right?"

His attacker remained silent.  Clancy continued to ramble.

"No cash?  Cheque?  Visa, even?"

There was still no response.

"American Express?"

"The colour of you money faded a long time ago, McClean."

"Wh-what?  I don’t quite know who your sources are, pal, but let me assure you that my finances-"

"Enough, swine.  Your finances are irrelevant.  You cannot buy your way out of this."

"Out of what?  Who are you?"

"Who am I?  I'm an amalgamation of every single person you ever wronged.  I represent unemployed wrestlers and their starving families.  I represent a whole regional territory and its talent, totally wiped out simply because you wanted some room for your precious UWU to breathe.  I represent all the business partners you double-crossed.  I represent all the bad cheques, bad debts.  I'm that weight on your fucking conscience.  I'm that pressure around your eyes, the stinging sensation up and down your arm.  I'm the ghost of Christmas past, present and to come.  I'm the fucking taxman, McClean."

"Sure..."  Began McClean, trying to catch his breath in order to give off a false impression of calmness.  "...Of course you are.  I see where we're going with this.  You don't want a payoff in the literal sense..."  He took another deep breath.  "...You just want what's coming to you after all your hard work.  Am I right or am I right, 'Ject?"

"DON'T call me that!!!"  The attacker demanded before shoving Clancy face-first into the white brick wall in front of him.  The wet sound of sweaty, flabby skin hitting cold, hard concrete echoed throughout the underground car park of the GZW Coliseum.  Clancy's body crumpled against the wall and he was reduced to a well-dressed heap on the ground. 

The attacker pocketed his knife before kicking the floored, balled-up billionaire in the stomach, giving McClean no choice but to roll over and stare the man in the face.  The headshot against the wall had blurred his vision considerably.  He could only just make out a bulky man in a heavy black coat.  The attacker's hood was up, but Clancy knew it was Reject.  For fear of another beating, he opted not the vocalise that particular thought.  "Please...  Tell me what it is you want.  Whatever it is, I'll do it.  C'mon, for both of our sake's...  Security will be swarming this place in minutes, friend."

"Security?"  The hooded man asked quietly.  It was as if Clancy had struck a nerve with him.  "You called SECURITY?!"

Clancy whimpered and pushed himself back up against the wall, coming to an awkward sitting position.  "No, no, no...  I just mean, that, you know..."

Calling McClean's bluff, the hooded man relaxed.  Slowly, he removed his hood...

"It IS you!!!"  Exclaimed McClean, excitedly.

Reject, head freshly shaven, stared down at his old manager.  "Is it?"  He asked the still-cowering freelance journalist.

"What are you, drunk?  It's you - Reject."

"What do you think, old man?  Clancy, you may have called me 'Reject' at one point, but aside from that, you don't know the first thing about me."

"Hey, that's not true.  You're from Pennsylvania-"

"Don't even start."

McClean promptly and wisely fell silent.

"Good.  Now, then.  How, exactly, is it that I 'disappoint' you, Philanthropist?"

Clancy's eyes widened as though he'd seen a ghost.  "Disappoint?  What?  Where are you getting all of this from, Reject?"

"Just Business."

"Just Business?  What are you talking about, disappointment?  I gave you the best damn write-up of them all.  You got an A+, for Chrissakes!  That's better than Spartan, Taylor or Pimp.  Reject, what the-"

"Don't even try to weasel your way out of this."  Reject reached into his pocket and pulled out a torn, glossy scrap of paper.  Without a second thought, he licked one side of it and stuck it to his own forehead.  "Read it, vermin..."

"Oh, I don't know.  I haven't got my reading glasses, and..."

"Don't be so foolish as to make me ask you again."

"Right...  Hang on, what's this?  A 'C'?  No, no, no...  This is wrong.  All of this is wrong.  I've been misquoted, 'Ject."

"Shut the fuck up and finish reading."

McClean did just that.  Thick lines began to furrow his brow, as he grew visibly more and more concerned.  "Reject, I'm telling you-"

"Stop calling me that.  To you, I have no name."

"Alright, then.  Listen, buddy, I'm telling you - I didn't write that stuff.  I gave you the star treatment, man.  I ranked you higher than this company's supposed top dogs...  I don't understand."  Clancy knew he made a convincing liar, but the look on the man he'd until then known as Reject's face had him doubting himself.  He knew he had to pick up his game.  "Wait, I've got it.  That's exactly it."

"Exactly what?"

"The higher-ups...  They changed what I wrote about you to make their boys look bigger and better.  You know I wouldn't say any of that about you, right?"

"You expect me to believe that after everything you've done already?"

"Of course.  Look at it this way - you're my top client.  You're the icing on the McClean cake.  You know I've got the funds to acquire anyone, and I mean anyone that I want to...  Out of everybody, I chose you.  That means I passed up managing people like Pimp Bizkit, Kid Kaos, Justin Sharp, John Taylor...  The list is endless.  Why would I put so much into building you up only to yank it all back out again?  I'm a businessman first and foremost, and that would simply make for bad business.  Quite frankly, I don't do bad business.  Do you see?"

"What I see is a petty, spineless coward.  I see a short, fat man hunched against a parking lot wall, on the verge of wetting himself.  I see the selfish prick who pulled out on me when I needed him the most in favour of Electric fucking Sharpe..."

Clancy tried to laugh off Reject's words, but the damage had clearly been done.  He felt that it was time he played the guilt card.  "Well, now.  You haven't exactly been a model client yourself, Reject." To Clancy's surprise, calling the man by his given name didn't seem to bother him anymore.  "You no-showed a string of HKWF shows...  You went and joined the poxy DisOrder without even consulting me...  You nearly KILLED my other client, Electric Sharpe, last night...  And to top it all off, you've been M.I.A. for the past two months!  I've been looking for you constantly.  You don't answer your phone.  You don't return to my calls.  You just show up wherever and whenever you like and do whatever you like.  Quite frankly, 'Ject', you are a liability!  You do take more than you contribute, you-"

Blackout.

Clancy McClean awoke some time later, staring back at his own reflection in a broken, dirty mirror.  His right eye was black and dried blood decorated his chin.  He was still wearing the same immaculate navy suit that he had been earlier that night, but it too had been roughed up.  His body felt as though it was frozen, paralysed from the neck down.  What had Reject done to him?  Where had he taken him?

"REJECT!" Barked McClean at the top of his lungs. "I ORDER you to come here at once!  Where the hell am I, you crazy bastard?"

The ensuing silence really got to McClean.  He'd always been claustrophobic, but the size of this bathroom he was in really took that to a new extreme.  Although most of his body was numb, he deduced that he was sitting on a closed toilet.  The ceiling was probably not even half a metre above his head and seemed as though it was lowering the whole time.  The door to his left was closed, the tiling on the wall to his right gaudy.  A mangy sink hung directly in front of him, just beneath the mirror.  Tilting his head down ever so slightly, Clancy could see that the sink was full of water.  Scattered about the surface were shaved strands of black hair - Reject's.

"Sonofa-" Clancy began, being interrupted, to his absolutely befuddlement, by his own voice.

“Greetings, subordinate friends.  I, the magnificent Clancy McClean, am here today to warn you of troubles ahead.  As I roam the grounds here in my perfect Totalitaria, I am left with the sinking feeling that we have not seen the last of my ex-client, Reject.  How does this fit into these troubles ahead, you foamingly ask?”

Clancy couldn't believe his ears.  There was no doubt about it, it was his own voice.  Burly sounds of a man urinating on a car ensued, followed by the instantly recognizable sound of a police siren follow as Clancy realised exactly what he was listening to.  "That video..."

Once again, his own recorded voice interrupted him.

“This.  This.  One word can sum up this imminent plague – Reject.  The man has always been a loose cannon, but over the last few years has calmed himself down considerably, spending substantial time in rehabilitation centres across the globe.  So much so that he gathered the wherewithal to declare himself “Straight Edge”, in a bold effort to butter up yours truly and convince me to give him the honour of my services.  The shocking video evidence that you are now watching is proof that it was all hyperbole!  All of it!  The kid’s a scumbag and a cheat.  He’s a vagrant and a vagabond.  He’s a drifter, he always has been, but now he’s a dangerous drifter.  This lunatic is unpredictable and volatile and I would be happy to never lay eyes on him again.  Unfortunately, contractual obligations prevent me from dismissing him completely. But the second I get hard evidence that he’s back on the brown stuff, he’s history.  Gone.  That’ll be it for him and CCW.  Hell, that’ll be it for him and wrestling in civilised countries!  Reject, if you’re watching this on a stolen TV somewhere, take heed to what I say!  I know what you’re up to.  More importantly, though, the general public do as well."

Clancy recalled, as clear as day, recording the video that had been playing outside the bathroom.  He'd done so in the weeks following Reject's siding with the DisOrder in an effort to cut ties.  He soon realised the fatal error of his ways, however, as he heard the TV set outside the room be hurled at least a couple of feet to a far wall.  He shuddered as he heard sparks and the shattering of a television into a million useless shards of plastic.  Worst of all, however, was the gut-wrenching howl that followed.  The next few seconds seemed like hours to the man that would in any other circumstance have called himself "Wealth Personified".  As a hotheaded Reject nearly pulled the bathroom door off of it's handles, however, he suddenly didn't feel so rich. 

"You snivelling piece of horse shit...  I ought to strangle you where you sit."

"Now, Reject - I can explain..."

"Explain?  That fucking video?  I don't think so, you filthy liar.  You have the audacity to call me a vagrant?  A vagabond?  You want to work double-time at that old rumour mill of yours?  You want to try to drag my name through the mud?  You want to pigeonhole me as a 'C' grade competitor and piss all over everything I've worked for and achieved, in and out of the ring?  No.  You don't get to do that.  I'm off limits, McClean.  Realise that.  The last two people that fucked with me like this were Electric Sharpe and Mr. Klown.  They're lucky not to be the main ingredients of a thick farmhouse vegetable soup at this stage...  I showed them exactly what happens when you cross the boundary and even try to mess with me.  It wasn't about the Extreme title, it was about neutralising two scumbags that have made a habit out of jumping me backstage and berating me on the mic.  That doesn't happen.  You just don't do that.  Why do you think there've been no repercussions about no-showing HKWF?"

McClean said nothing.

"...Because they know BETTER than that.  They know that I'm not to be messed with.  It doesn't matter if it's Jackie Lee, John Taylor or Seth Raide himself - They know better.  They know that I'm not fair game.  I'm not one of them..."

"I know you're not..."  McClean began timidly.  "...it's why I picked you up in the first place.  Reject, we can make this work.  You work with me, you'll go wherever you want.  Now, if you'll allow me to make a few calls and-"  Clancy stopped, his hand half way into his pocket.  "Did you take my phone?"

Without even thinking twice, Reject replies: "It's out front with all the rest of your shit.  You can pick it up on the way out."

"Well...  It's late...  What is it, like-"

"Six A.M."

"-yeah.  I think it's time I hit the old dusty trail and-"

"McClean, you're here for a reason.  Why the fuck would I go to the trouble of bringing you here only to let you leave without solving the original problem?"

Clancy began to mumble something, but Reject interrupted him.

"Just this once, Clancy, you listen and I talk.  You're here because I want nothing further to do with you.  I've tried to tell you that the easy, subtle way for the past month, but you're just too stupid to realise it.  In the parking lot earlier, I tried yet again, but you WOULDN'T LISTEN.  It's come to this, McClean.  It's come to one grown man abducting another and feeding him a noxious cocktail of some of his own Corporation's patented liquor mixed with whatever vile, unpure crap I could get my hands on in the space of an hour...  McClean, just give in.  Accept the fact that you blew what chance you had at managing me and that I've moved on.  I'm not offended, it's happened to me a thousand times before.  However, move on.  No more arena lockdowns.  No more search parties.  No more phone calls.  No more magazine cheapshots.  NOTHING.  You see me at the Coliseum, you run the opposite direction with your fat little tail between your chicken legs.  Agreed?"

"Reject, I can't-"

"Clancy, don't be a fucking idiot.  We can end this here and now."

Clancy tried to shake himself out of the temporary, drug and alchohol induced paralysis that had overtaken his body.  He managed to do so enough to raise both hands towards the face of the six-time HKWF Hardcore Champion.

"OK.  You win.  I agree...  That's us finished, okay?"  Offered McClean in a particularly insincere yet convincing tone.

"Good.  Now get the fuck up off my toilet seat, grab your shit and leave."

For the time being, McClean thought it best that he do what he was told.