Breaking the Tension!™ Episode 10: Nobu Tano

Patty O’ Brian sat at the desk of her studio, getting on some last minute makeup. Prepping up. Looking pretty while her cameraman got ready for the interview, dressed in her usual blue hoop skirt, the trademark baseball It had been a little while since she’d had an episode of Breaking the Tension! to film, partly because it had been hard to find new participants. She had a theory on why this was

Helvetica Lee.

She’d never met her. They’d never had a conversation. But she absolutely loathed the woman. It was bad enough that Friction already had a dedicated interviewer, but now there was this tart, someone cutting into Patty’s online audience. She’d gotten to Gato Blanco before Patty had the chance.

That could’ve been a big interview! International talent!

It had just slipped through her fingers and gone to the far less experienced, clearly less professional, and certainly less cute Helvetica. Patty knew one of the key traits of any worthwhile journalist was her ability to sense a threat, and this certainly qualified. Preemptive strikes had to be made. It was time for Breaking the Tension! to step back into the fore. And she had just the guest to do it with.

Her director gave her the signal. The countdown started. By the time he reached one, Patty already had her best smile out.

Though maybe it was a little too wide. Dial it down a notch.

Almost.

Little less.

There, perfect.

”Hello and welcome, true believers, to Breaking the Tension!” Patty stayed still for approximately five seconds, the time in which the theme song would be spliced in. Always hated this part.

”As many of you know, Breaking the Tension! has been on a little hiatus of late, and during that time, the Tension landscape has changed dramatically. We’ve got a new World Champion, Clyde Gastin. A new hentai champ coming soon, after years of the belt gathering dust. More and more fresh faces are being added to the roster, as the revolution is being televised.”

Wink. Pause. Let the audience laugh. Move on.

”On that note, I thought it would be good to address some of the new talent coming to our humble brand - get a chance for you, the fans, to know them before they hit the mat. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce our guest for the night.”

Patty moved to the side and held her arm out, letting the camera swing around and face the man who’d been sitting just off-screen. ”Nobu Tano! How's it feel to be on the grand stage?”

When Nobu Tano got word that someone wanted to interview him, he thought for once he was the one being pranked. That would’ve been the ultimate irony. But no, this was for real! Something about fans getting to know the new wrestlers and his name more or less being pulled out of a hat-- but whatever! This was an interview on TV! This was a chance to get noticed by people, and...well, some other various things that came to mind...

He’d shown up wearing black shorts and a bright blue t-shirt, deciding a casual look felt the right for this. Was it? He had no idea. Eh, oh well. Probably wouldn’t matter. No one had made any big deal about it when he showed up, and he’d quickly been ushered to a seat in the room and told to just wait for Patty’s lead. Sounded simple enough.

He watched Patty go through her lines to introduce the show, before swinging things over to him. Once the camera was on him, Nobu smiled brightly and waved to the camera. “Hey everybody!”

Then he turned to Patty as she asked her question. “Well, it’s definitely a dream come true,” he replied with a chuckle. “I’ve wrestled in smaller places all over the country, but I never thought I’d be lucky enough to wind up here! ...Oh and by the way, didn’t get a chance to talk before we started, but I just wanted to say I’m a big fan, and it’s awesome to meet you, Patty,” Nobu said, extending a hand to her for a handshake. His initial answer to her question had been entirely true. But that bit of flattery at the end? Just meant to distract her from the small hand buzzer on his palm, ready to give Patty a surprising shock if she chose to shake his hand.

Oh, this was nice so far. Nobu seemed like a sweet, innocent boy, nothing like the more brutish types the AFW seemed keen on employing lately. Rather cute, too. Patty could certainly see the appeal among the schoolgirl crowd, and his hairstyle would help her drag in the anime lovers. Perfect.

”Oh, my.” Patty took a moment to wink at the camera, miliking the moment for all it was worth. ”Well, it’s certainly nice to meet a FUCK!”

Patty let out a shrill shriek as the shock ran through her hand. She flew back and would’ve nearly fallen out of her seat if not for grabbing the desk at the last moment. She looked around for a panicked second, then put the pieces together and resisted the temptation to slap Nobu across the face.

This was her show. Had to keep cool. Don't let the tension ironically break.

”Ha…” She put on a smile and slowly made her way back to her seat, accompanying it with a good, hearty. ”Heh, heh, heh, hahaha! Good, uh, good one! You sure got me, there, yeah!” Smile, smile, smile.

There would be no complimentary gift basket in Nobu’s future.

Patty couldn’t have had a more priceless reaction, and it sent Nobu into an intense laughing fit. Half the shot captured by the camera consisted of Patty looking stunned and confused, while the other half was Nobu pounding the bottom of his fist on his knee and laughing hysterically like a fool.

“Phew! That was great. You should’ve seen your face!” he said, wiping a tear from his eye and chuckling away the last bit of laughter. No matter how many times he’d done that, it had almost never failed him, in or out of the ring. Obviously a hand buzzer was hardly a common tool for wrestlers to use. Maybe that had something to do with how well it seemed to work.

“So anyway, you were saying?” Nobu said, taking his mind off of his jokes and coming back to focusing instead on this important interview. For the moment, at least...

Patty contemplated stuffing Nobu in a box and pushing him off a cliff into a deep river. One that led to a waterfall. A waterfall with sharp, jagged rocks at the bottom. And sharks.

A little macabre, but it did wonders to help her mood as he laughed at her like a madman. She even managed to laugh along with him, though hers had a manic edge to it.

”Hahahahahahaha.” Slight pause. ”Ha.”

Patty took a moment to straighten her dress out and summon her poise, flattening each wrinke. A journalist had to look proper, after all. Had to to be on her best, at all times. Exude an aura of understanding and forethought. That was the difference between her and a lazy slattern like Helvetica: professionalism.

”Yes, as I was saying.” She coughed and cleared her throat, then sat up even more straight. ”Obviously, this is a big opportunity for you to step out on the world stage, play on the grandest venue of them all. Tell me, what drove you to wrestling in the first place? What brought you to Tension?”

“A taxi,” Nobu immediately answered jokingly when Patty asked what had brought him here, then chuckled at his own response. Technically it was true, though it was obviously quite far from the sort of answer Patty was looking for. But then he went into a more appropriate, relevant and complete answer.

“No, actually I never would’ve guessed I’d be here, to be honest. I didn’t have any training when I first started wrestling, and that was in front of some of the smallest crowds in Japan. But after a while, the crowds started getting bigger and bigger. Before I knew it, I was offered a spot here pretty much out of the blue,” he said. Not extremely detailed, but it was a basic summary of the truth at least. Being signed to Tension was genuinely the most unexpected thing that had happened to him in his life.

He then reached to the space beside him and grabbed a small cylinder can of peanuts. “Hope you don’t mind if I snack on these. Haven’t eaten since breakfast,” he said, moving his hand to twist of the cap, but then stopped. “Wait, sorry. Where are my manners? You want some, Patty?” he offered, holding the can out to her. But this was no ordinary can of peanuts. Yes there were in fact peanuts inside - he was telling the truth about being hungry. But also in the can was a coiled up plastic snake on a small spring. If Patty opened the can, well...the surprise inside would make its presence known immediately.

As irritating...annoying…infuriating as Nobu’s little trick had been, now that they were cooling down, Patty was seeing it in a different light. Any good interview had to allow for a moment of levity. She was reminded of an interview she’d watched with Muhammad Ali, where the boxer had pretended to doze off in the middle of an interview and start sleep boxing, getting a laugh from everyone when he rose up and took a swing at the reporter. Good times.

She could endure a jibe. No harm, no foul.

”So, Tension sought you out? That’s a little surprising. My understanding is that many of wrestlers - the male  wrestlers, at least - volunteer themselves to the promotion, and we have no shortage of them signing up.” She picked up a pen and idly waved it his way as she leaned forward. ”What do you think drew them to you and your style?”

When Nobu offered her the peanuts, she hesitated at first - in truth, she was allergic. But rejecting such an offer wouldn’t do well for her press, and she didn’t want to edit out the video so much and risk it looking choppy. She’d just pretend.

”Oh, thank you. I must admit, I - GODDAMNIT!”

Patty let out a shriek and fell out of her chair as the springloaded snake of death flew out of the can, zipping across the room and nearly giving her a heartattack. She hit the floor and rolled around, her wide-eyed gaze spinning around the room. ”What? What? What?”

Nobu was so eagerly waiting for Patty to open the can he wasn’t really even paying attention to what she said. Though she wasn’t wrong about the somewhat nature behind his arrival to Tension. The fact was that out of the dozens of matches he’d competed in elsewhere, you could count his victories on one hand. Nobu had been recruited for two simple reasons: to add a comedic element to the shows, and so the fans could get off on seeing another handsome young man getting dominated by beautiful women. He was entirely aware of this, and was more than happy to help on both ends.

But that was hardly on his mind as he watched the plastic snake spring out of the can, scaring Patty nearly to death! “PFFTHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!” Once again bursting into an enormous fit of laughter, Nobu practically fell out of his seat too. “God, that was priceless!” he said, pounding the space next to him with his fist while his legs kicked out in front of him.

Only after what felt like an eternity did his laughter finally begin to die down, and he wiped a tear from his eye. Nobu couldn’t wait to watch this all back later just to relive Patty’s priceless reaction. But for now he tried to once again reel his focus back over to the interview, assuming Patty had managed to collect herself by then.

“Alright. So..... I’m sorry, what were we talking about again?” he asked, laughing a bit as he spoke. It took considerable effort on his part to keep the laugh from escalating further, with the hilarity of the moment still quite fresh in his mind, but somehow he managed it.

The list of things that could tick Patty right off was shorter than many would believe. She liked to think she was a woman of tolerance. Of understanding. That she wouldn’t just fly off the handle and lose her cool at the first sign of distress.

But if there was one thing she loathed, more than anything else, it was having to repeat herself. Particularly, having to repeat herself during an interview.

It was the insult. The ultimate slap in the face. And considering that a real slap in the face would actually be more dignified than what Nobu had done so far, it was doubly insulting.

But no, she was not going to lose her cool. This was Breaking the Tension!. This was her show. Not the Nobu Tano Comedy Hour. She would not be upstaged.

Patty took the time to make sure her hat was properly aligned. ”As I was saying…” She had a quick cough, getting the proper modulation in her voice. ”Why do you think Tension was interested in you in the first place? You don’t seem to bring much to the table physically, if you don’t mind me saying.” She kept her tone saccharine, putting a grin on top. ”And there are certainly more experienced talents they could have tapped.”

Nobu had hardly even heard the question when it had been asked the first time, without the lowkey insults thrown in. But this time he heard both together, loud and clear. However, though he was sure Patty would love to see some sign that he felt offended by the comments, she’d have no such luck. Instead, Nobu just grinned and shrugged.

“I don’t know. I think I’m in pretty decent shape. Here, take a look,” he responded, then pulled up his shirt to reveal his toned abs. No, he wasn’t exactly an enormous body builder or anything, but as he’d said, he was in pretty good shape. And he gave Patty a playful wink before dropping his shirt back down again and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“But anyway, I think that--” *KNOCK* KNOCK* KNOCK* Nobu looked toward the door the noise was coming from, seemingly confused as to who that could possibly be. Though in reality, Nobu had hidden a small speaker by a plant just outside the door, and in his pocket was a small controller which he’d used to trigger the realistic sound of the knocking. With any luck, that’d get Patty to go check it out. On its own, getting Patty to answer a door while there was no one there might easily seem like the weakest of his pranks so far. But really, it was to set up something much better. He just needed Patty to leave her seat and turn her attention away from him for a few seconds to pull it off.