The Jackrabbit- The mind of Jay Ethelon was broken decades ago by the man who became Talon. As the delirium worsened, he has become a darker, deeper man than those days, with an undiscovered secret that has made him the victim of attempts on his life. There was a time when his friends were his everything, but times have changed. A year and a half has passed since Jackrabbit stepped away from the OWF, and now he is alone. A betrayer in their midst broke their little gang apart, and the Jackrabbit is forced to confront the demons of his mind with nobody at his side.

Vanilla- The girl who calls herself Vanilla has felt misunderstood her entire life. The Jackrabbit was the first person since her sister Cassie that Vanilla could finally feel comfortable with. But when her ex-boyfriend proposed to her, the Jackrabbit did something unthinkable. A dark secret has forced Vanilla to abandon those she loves, and everything she once knew is in doubt.

Stevie Guile- For nine long years, Stevie put his personal life, and his own identity, aside to join the lunatic Jackrabbit on the road, protecting him from the endless organisations trying to enslave him. But when a traitor was revealed, Stevie was forced into hiding. His enigmatic links to the Zero People faction were tested, and his loyalties frayed. An encounter with the omnipotent Hive-Mind has left Stevie reeling, and out of his depth in a war he only thought he understood.

NO PLACE

"Here we go again." Vanilla had been up and down these streets a hundred times, had trodden this same path till the soles in her trainers were worn. Literally. The rain was doing her no favors today, coming down torrentially and soaking her pink and red and orange hair flat to her head and neck. The roots were showing now, it had been a long time since she could afford to dye it, even those crappy package ones from the superstore. The street was slick, light careening off it at all angles, turning the concrete to a mirror-like film. The sun has just recently set, but Vanilla had no better place to be. No place left to go. Her RAWR hoody was already covered in holes, letting the shower in and chilling her to the bones, but she tugged it tighter around her anyway. There was nothing she could for the sodden socks though. She had taken shelter under the overhang of an appliance store, her back pressed close against the glass pane. Somewhere behind her, an LCD display stand showed a dozen versions of the same newscaster talking about something subtitled as 'Fatebreaker Incidents'. She was thankful for the small amount of illumination the screen provided, as she slumped to the sidewalk. A young guy approached her, his own overcoat tugged tight around him, and she reached a hand into her pocket. Her fingers brushed the tight wad of leaves secure in their packet. "You... Hey, mister..." Vanilla muttered, her voice mostly lost in the rain. Her throat rasped awkwardly, it had been some time she had drank properly. The guy looked at her, his eyes thinned beneath a matted fringe, a nose stud over his left nostril. This might work... "You... looking to buy?" The guy approached, which meant he hadn't turned and ran away. This might be her lucky night. She might eat tonight. She pulled the wad from her pocket, held it firm in her palm. He came under the overhang now, and she saw his relief at the dry reprieve. "You selling?" he asked. Wise caution. "Yeah. Uh... yeah." She ignored that little build-up of acid in the pit of her gut. The part of her that hated herself for this. "Then I might be buying," he said, with a grin, and she noticed a tongue piercing. It reminded her of Spyke. Of Andrew. Even all this time, years on, she still thought about him. About what had become of him; what had become of him because of her. "Great," the definitely-not-Andrew guy said, that same awkwardness in his voice that she felt rattling around in her own mind. Selling junk on cold wet street corners did nothing for her social anxieties, apparently. "You... come back to my place, then?" he asked earnestly, "Or do we need to get a motel?" "What? What do you..." The realization hit her like a bullet. "Shit! No, you pervert! Weed, I'm selling fucking weed!" "Fuck! A junkie!?!" And he was gone, back into the black of the storm. Gone. And she remained hungry, and now a little disgusted too. "I don't use the stuff, asshole!" she yelled back into the night. This is it, Vanilla thought now to herself, angrily crumpling the packet back into her tight jeans. This was the travelling she had sought so eagerly; the back-packer's life she had dreamt about even just two years ago. A five-dollar bill to her name, living one meal to the next, hoping to make a sell of this damn stuff to pay for just another week. Somehow hoping beyond hope that her break would come in the next town. She had wanted this thrill, craved this adventure. That was before, though. That was before she had met Stevie, before she had met JR. Before she had fucked everything up. Her stomach tied in knots; it had been months since she had thought about Jackrabbit, particularly about their first meeting in the Jekyll & Hyde. She'd had such a childish innocence as he had agreed to take her on the road with the OWF. She had seen more of America than any girl could dream to. She'd seen the good and the bad. It had all been sights and sounds, then, as they had touched down in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Dakota, Washington. Whatever town JR had to wrestle in, that's where they went. All on OWF expenses, too. She'd stood outside the White House with JR, her arm draped around- well, on top of - his massive shoulders. He'd laughed � as always. They'd taken a selfie, she remembered, though he hadn't really known what that was. He thought the idea of a tiny Jackrabbit inside her screen was hilarious, though. Idly, she pulled out her phone. The screen was cracked, the notification in the top corner said she had a dollar-fifty left in credit. 'Emergencies only', she'd told herself. The old photo now forgotten, she thumbed lazily through the contacts page. JR had never had a cell, had never known how to operate one. But Stevie, Jed... her thumb hovered over the names before flicking back to an even less utilized one. Cassie She dialed the number before she could convince herself not to, thrust the cell to her ear. First ring. Second ring. Third ring. "Hey, Cassie spea-" Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Her sister's voice died in Vanilla's ear, replaced by the dull resonance almost in step with her heartbeat. The screen backlight lit a single drop down her cheek, probably just a raindrop from the overhang above. One dollar thirty remaining.   * * *   In this place, knowledge is the everything, belief is nothing. The quicksilver orbs are the corral of forever, a thousand lives in their component pieces, a million memories made real. But the memories of the all belong to no one. No one without the power to hold the quicksilver in their palm. For most the argent would burn, adhering to the membrane of the mind like a quick set glue. They might touch the shining surface, and in a white flash moment, they would lose who they were, where they were, when they were, why they were... The mercurial ooze drips through the gaps in his fingers. It does not burn. It does not sting. The pitter patter of a lost memory hisses between his feet. In here he is alone and together. One and all. AAA-HAHAHA-HAHA-HAHAHAHA-HAHAHAH- AHAHHA The laughter isn't his. Just another reminder on the winds of this void. In here there is no escaping that which came before; in the landscape of his mind. The void is a canvas of grey, plumes of blankness rise up like tower blocks around him. There was a time when this nothingness was filled with the cajoling of rabbits, the ever-present symbol of his liberty. Their grace unparalleled, they bound across his mindscape with no purpose but to be. Above them, the cry of an eagle. The hunter. Another symbol. These rabbits had been his gold, his insanity, his legends, his outsiders. But they were gone, like everyone else. He is alone. "ALONE!" The Jackrabbit follows his voice as it echoes around the mindscape, dodging its way between the silver orbs that are his memoirs. The noise has nowhere to go, nowhere to settle. Inside each orb is a time, a place, an event. Down his muscled arm runs the last vestige of a first kiss, or a first dance, or the first time he'd boarded a plane. He can't be sure. Can't recall. It had been just a memory. Once. The echo leads him past the disarray of orbs, the cacophony of spheres of varying shades and sizes. Important, unimportant, he doesn't know. He has lost count of which are his. To the uninitiated, everything here is one. Everything the same. The first taste of a waffle and the first moment you gave up believing in a greater purpose, there is no difference here. And so each orb passes, untouched, unspoiled, undisturbed. For now. But the Jackrabbit knows where the echo is taking him. Where it always takes him. The horizon stretches out before him a hundred miles, the lights of the tiny human ants below flickering out one by one. He stands firm on the rooftop that had been a thousand nightmares, awake and asleep. The skylight was locked somewhere behind him, the exit just a hand's stretch away. He hadn't used that exit the night he came up here with Talon. He had got down from here the hard way. Jay Ethelon had to die to let the Jackrabbit live. He had sought revenge in GWO. He had sought to end Talon as Talon had ended him. That was a lifetime ago. This orb is almost dull with use. Visited over and over, broken again and again, but always it resurfaces. The second orb is much different. The second orb has been cared for, cleaned, nurtured. Within its quicksilver embrace is another time- a dozen wrestling rings, ropes emblazoned in red and grey, in blue and grey, different announcers in their corners, different logos on their mats. Different, but one thing in common. This was a time when the Enigma and the Unorthodox One fused, became one and rampaged through the ICWF and NLW as champions. A friendship made whole again, a crime forgotten. A past redeemed. A fusion of selves. The rogue doctor Libor Radnik had imprisoned the Jackrabbit. And the man known then as Stevie Sol had rescued him. But ultimately it was Talon that would be their savior, who would liberate him from Libor. "The greatest-est... time in my... life..." He would have laughed once, but now he did not. This is the memory that had betrayed him. This memory allowed him to become blind to what he should have always seen. The inevitable betrayal that OWF would bring. The second fall that The Enigma would enforce on his beloved friend at Blood Bath. And for what? Glory?! With a single hand, he reaches out, grabbing the orb into his palm. As before, it does not burn his skin. As before, he would squeeze it between his fingertips, would feel it ooze... but this time the orb does not break. Does not crack. It resists his grip, as it has so many times before. This memory of NLW will not die. In his frustration the Jackrabbit forces the memory away from him. He will not be that fool again, will not fall victim to idle fantasies of cohesion and unity. He has no friends, not here. Not anymore. Where there are no friends, there will be no betrayals. Talon will not spin his fantasies any longer. A swirling of color erupts around the Jackrabbit, and he narrows the eyes that he had liberated from ridiculously omnipresent shades. The colors take shape now; aliens, robots, small squishy squirrels and fluffy stuffed unicorns. Claws, and mallets, and laser rifles. He is in the Arcade. Here he had killed people. The mad man Tero Haber had threatened his life with hired thugs, and he had forced open the cracks in their tiny minds. Of course they had complied with him, of course they had placed their own handguns in their mouths. And of course they had pulled the triggers, popping their pointless heads like fresh watermelons. Everyone assumed he did not remember. They assumed the innocence of a child in a man they knew to be ruthless, to be violent, to be brutal. But he remembered everything, locked away inside these orbs where none could find them. Until EJ Slayer dragged them to the surface. The chiding of The Movement had broken an already tethered cord inside of the Jackrabbit. He had let go of the fa�ade that kept him secure, kept him comforted. And he had unleashed a decade of frustration, firstly on Slayer himself with the chains that had been his comfort. The chains that had set the Jackrabbit free, unbound him from the life of a victim. And when Slayer was put to a final rest at Campus Chaos, there was Spyke... The parking lot takes shape around him even as he remembers it. The asphalt is a dark ocean marked by squares, designations for the stationary vehicles, their hoods illuminated by the street lights, an aurora bouncing off their windshields into the night sky. Abandoned powder, a chalk line across one hood, a credit card abandoned beside it. A body on the ground below, sprawled out, blood from a blow to the head. Spyke. Andrew. Vanilla's treacherous ex-lover. Whatever his name, it made no difference. He'd know his name when he woke up, but he wouldn't know Vanilla's. The Jackrabbit had made sure of that. The man could not marry a specter. Would not marry... "Vanilla." The name still brings venom to his lips. He grinds his teeth, though in here they are not his in truth. He hates � no, he reviles the way she hounds his thoughts, twisting that knot in his stomach. All she had been, and all she had done. He can free himself of her, though. She is just another memory to the Jackrabbit. Just another silver orb. He reaches out and takes the memory into his palm, squeezes it. This time he feels the past buckle at his pressure, time dilating beneath his grip. This power is his, his alone. This world is his, and she will not deface it with her lies. The orb splits, a smooth crack down the center, and somewhere a former champion screams. But screaming is just laughing by another name.   * * *   The tapping of keys had become like a lullaby to him. Despite years of turning computer keyboards to his bidding, that constant stream, the clack clack clack of the plastic pieces had come to represent this new life. The most important part of his day now was the coffee round, the most challenging part remembering whether Andrea took two sugars and whether Ryan had it white or black this week. That guy was a grouchy prick. But the melancholy was soothing, the monotony a stark contrast to the life he had lead. He couldn't help but to reflect on those years. Stevie Sol had been a man turned to a reluctant job of monitoring and controlling a psychotic man child, overseeing important research into the mind of a man in need of help. Stevie Guile had been a man on the run, never staying in one place for too long, fearing for his life, never knowing whether he would die from a bullet wound at the hands of the manipulative Nordic extremist Tero Haber, or from a mind melting attack from his liege. His companion. His friend. Jackrabbit. But for Stevie Mills, it was spreadsheets. These damn spreadsheets, these were the bane of his existence. The cells would freeze, the data would corrupt, and the formulas � was there nobody in this company that understood basic look-ups? Stevie had landed the unassuming job with a regional retailer, running reports and statistics based on the output of third-tier suppliers in the financial sector. Simple shit. He hadn't even had to change his attire from that ever-present yellow tie, the dull grey suit he had worn for years. The job had been easy to land, thanks to his contacts in the Zero People faction, and his computing had always been his strongest asset. He'd been offered a promotion within the first six months, but turned it down. Better to keep his head down. This was his last chance, his final out. The office he was in had twenty staff members, including Stevie, each confined to pods of five. The company gave good perks; interest free pensions, additional annual leave, and they even allowed a radio station to play on a Friday afternoon. Some cookie-cutter pop music bullshit was playing currently, but Stevie had learnt to block it out of his mind, only refocusing when the news came on. "Mills!" he heard Arnold shout from across three other desks. He suspected Arnold would be after the quarterly report on cost savings for the south west cluster... "Do you have that report, Mills? For the quarterly cost..." Arnold began. "...savings for the south west cluster," Stevie finished for him. "Yeah, Arnold, I'll mail it over." Arnold wasn't done though, weaving his way around the floor plan to come up behind Stevie's pod. He hovered over his colleague, his shirt tucked in tight and his top button done up beneath his maroon tie. Stevie hated doing the top button up on a shirt, it felt claustrophobic. And maroon? Really? He alt-tabbed his window back into the damn spreadsheet just as Arnold arrived, successfully hiding the wrestling news he'd been reading. It had been over a year and half since Jackrabbit had rejected the OWF, severing Stevie's ties with the crazy world of pro-wrestling in the process. He'd never enjoyed the sport before he was contracted to monitor Jackrabbit in NLW, but since those days he'd always found himself checking in. New about title changes in OWF, the latest hirings and firings from the top indie companies. Quest For The Best was under way. Again. The Phoenix had come out of retirement. Somehow Eva De La Cruz was still employed. But deep down Stevie was hoping to see Jackrabbit's name resurface on the site, some small glimpse into what he was doing now. It never came. Last time he'd seen the Unchained One, he was... "Fucking insane. Don't you think?" Arnold was saying. "Sorry? Uhm..." "Were you even listening to me, Mills? I said the forecasts for the supplier negotiations in second quarter are fucking insane..." "Yeah. Sorry. It's looking that way..." he answered, dragging himself back into the room. He honestly hadn't seen that report yet, but he could probably pull the figures easy enough. In a third of the time it had probably taken Arnold. "Get your head back in the game, Mills. You could be so much more in this business if you'd focus on the figures and quit your day-dreaming..." "Yeah..." Arnold had never seen anyone die. Arnold had never witnessed a man stripped of his memories and left a jabbering, dribbling mess on the cold asphalt of a parking lot at night. Arnold had never spoken with an omnipotent psionic with ultimate and intimate knowledge of every living thing. Lucky Arnold. "What..?" "Oh, sorry.." Stevie stammered again, cursing himself internally. "I just said... you're lucky. To... have such success..." "Not luck, Mills! Focus..." An e-mail popped up on the corner of Stevie's screen, something about an executive meeting in the board room. Stevie feigned fascination in the calendar invite to break Arnold's attention, letting the older man move back to his own workstation. '...another unusual event connected to what police are dubbing the 'Fatebreaker Incidents' occurred this morning...' the radio crackled over the sound of Andrea's pen, tapping over and over and over on her desk. "Andrea!" Stevie muttered over the desk divider, and she stopped the irritating habit. This wasn't the first time this had come up. '...police statement claims that the fourteen-year old boy was found alone in a nearby cemetery where he had been for two days. He was weeping over the loss of, what he claimed to be, his two dead grandchildren. Local psychiatr-' "Mills!" Arnold's yell broke over the sound of the radio. Stevie rolled his eyes, lifting his head just enough to see Arnold over the divider. "Phone call for you, Mills. Transferring it over..." Stevie's handset began to buzz, the little LED flashing red on the desk. The number was withheld, which wasn't uncommon for the larger suppliers that used switchboards. "Dunelm Financial, you're through to Steven Mills, how can I-" "Ay boy, it's me." The deep Brooklyn drawl came from the other end of the line. This was no supplier. "Jed Kingsley." Stevie acknowledged his old friend, trying to keep the neutrality in his voice. Nobody exclaimed at suppliers, and management could trace these calls. "Wha's it been, boy? Six months?" "Eight, but I'm not counting. Why are you calling? I'm at work." Stevie glanced up to make sure Arnold was back at his desk. Andrea's pen had begun tapping again. "Yah job, right?" came Jed's reply. "You din't pick up yah cell." "Yeah, I'm at work," Stevie reiterated, keeping his voice low. Nobody shouted at suppliers, either. "Tha's not work, Stevie. Tha's some nine-to-fiver cubicle-monkey desk slave bullshit." "I'm keeping clean, Jed. Head down. Out of the game." "Zero People need yah, Stevie. You don' good work fer us here, and you can do more." Stevie sighed, shaking his head, wrapping the phone cord around his fist. "You didn't see what I saw, Jed. Nobody did." The Hive-Mind had reached inside his mind and extracted every deep dark memory, every forgotten secret, every raw regret. A sentient safe cracker for every man's buried desires. A walking, talking goddamn Pandora box. And that box had opened inside Stevie's head, showing him the reality about those he trusted most. And showing him a future torn apart by a war that Stevie had only begun to scratch the surface of. A winding pit that he was spiraling into, out of his control. A rabbit hole. "I like it here, Jed. It's quiet. Nobody here is trying to kill me. Nobody here branded me a traitor. It's simple. It's really... me." "Yah were nevah simple, boy. Na�ve sometimes p'raps, but nevah simple. And I nevah had ya pegged as the traitor in t'is group. Not really. But thought you might wanna know.." "It's not important anymore, Jed. Whatever it is, it's not important. I have to get back to..." "NLW's reopening." A stunned silence was Stevie's only response. He ignored Arnold approaching the desk from the photocopier. "W-what?" "NLW. New Legends of Wrestling. It's re-opening its doors..." Shit. Shit shit shit. "W-we can't..." Stevie stammered. "We've got to find Jackrabbit. He can't know." Stevie slammed the receiver back on the desk, only vaguely acknowledging the humming tone. He shot from the desk, sending the computer chair careening into the desk pedestal. "Mills!" Arnold exclaimed behind him in surprise. "That equipment costs-" But Stevie shoved the balding man up out of his way, looking back only once on the way to his exit. "You can't do that, Mills! That'll be your job..." "Keep it. I didn't have the focus anyways. And tell Andrea to put that damn pen down."   * * *   The manager of the Wisconsin arena was among the first to know. He had signed the documentation that would lease the venue for one night in May. Capacity crowd, they were expecting an instant sell-out. He'd signed an NDA, but even so he could not help but to tell his wife. The wife of the manager of the Wisconsin arena had heard the news from her husband. He generally gave her the best scoops on the biggest acts coming to the arena. She got first pick of the tickets, best seats in the house. She didn't much care when he told her the recent news, she'd never understood that wrestling crap anyway. Wasn't that stuff fake? But she knew her hairdresser's boy loved it, so it was worth passing on. The hairdresser of the wife of the manager of the Wisconsin arena heard the news from her client. The woman was a damn gossip, couldn't keep a shred of information to herself. That's how she'd heard about Cyndi's miscarriage. Still, it was useful to get all the latest scoops about the Wisconsin arena, and ten bucks for a cut and dry to go with it. She'd pass the news on to her son, he loved that wrestling junk. The son of the hairdresser of the wife of the manager of the Wisconsin arena heard the news from his mom. He didn't know how she knew, but if it was true, this was going to be the biggest wrestling show of his life. Probably the biggest wrestling show to ever hit Wisconsin. They said Nick Perry would be on the show- if it was true, holy fucking shit! He had to tell his football coach, he'd be sure to go with him. The football coach of the son of the hairdresser of the wife of the manager of the Wisconsin arena heard the news from his Under-21s quarterback. He'd definitely take the kid, and probably a few of the other guys on the team too. This was a must-see show, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He'd take his brother for sure, he couldn't handle seven screaming teenagers by himself. The brother of the football coach of the son of the hairdresser of the wife of the manager of the Wisconsin arena found out from his brother. His brother knew that he had contacts on the inside. In his work as an emissary for the underground power broker in Green Bay, he would pull a few favors and get those wrestling tickets before anyone else could snap them up. The Jackrabbit was in the mind of the brother of the football coach of the son of the hairdresser of the wife of the manager of the Wisconsin arena at this time. He'd been sent to eliminate an emissary for a Green Bay power broker. Amongst the many silver orbs he was planning to extinguish, he found an interesting piece of news. Something familiar that stirred a fire in his heart. "NLW.... is... back...?"   * * * 1.