Post by Jet Somers on Mar 22, 2013 18:53:23 GMT -5
A wide angle shot of towering glass fortresses.
The weather forecast predicted a wintry relapse today, but no
meteorologist could have called for the blizzard of stationery
which drifts lazily toward the passersby on the sidewalks of West
57th street in New York City.
Pause. Leaflets freeze in midair.
In double time, the papers reverse toward the 38th story of the
Black Rock, gathering together where a spinning manila folder
flaps closed after collecting them all.
----------
---------
It's tense in the boardroom. Despite the cooler weather, the
collection of suited businessmen bead sweat across their
foreheads. At one end of the table, Leslie Moonves, CEO of the
former Viacom empire, rests his chin upon his clasped hands,
elbows propped on the table. A ghost of a smile paints his
features as he watches Travis Pierce examine the contents of the
manila folder.
He nods to the attendant who has been refilling water glasses,
and the attendant gives the slightest nod before stepping toward
one of the eight foot picture windows. He releases a latch, and
opens the window just enough to let a wisp of winter breeze
course through the sweltering conference room.
After an agonizingly long interim, Travis Pierce collects the
contents of the folder and places it on the table. He folds his
hands over it, then smiles toward Moonves. Without breaking the
smile, he slides the file to his left, to be picked up by Jet Somers.
Pierce continues the stare for what he deems an appropriate
amount of time for his partner to have gathered the gist of the
March Madness sponsorship deal, then turns slowly to meet The
Wild Card's eyes.
Jet screws up his mouth, nods, and closes the file. He turns to his
right and finds himself sharing a meaningful look with Pierce. It
lasts for nearly forty five seconds before they nod to one another.
In a moment, they have both pushed their plush seats back and
stood. They turn, and take a step toward the double doors.
"Ahem," Moonves clears his throat, the ghost of a smile exorcised.
With a flourish, Jet sweeps his left arm out, sending the entire file
sailing out the cracked window.
----------
----------
"You've developed quite a flair for the dramatic," Travis comments
to his partner as they pull on overcoats outside the CBS Building.
Behind them, excited tourists chuckle as they snatch papers from
the air.
"You think so?" Jet leads them toward the sidewalk where a
limousine waits. The white gloved driver pulls open the door, and
Opie gestures for Travis to get in first.
As the door slams behind him, Jet cracks the window an inch. He
breathes in the cold, refreshing northern air.
"You've come a long way from the directionless thug who was
content to follow the Klaus von Knorres and Alan Fernandez's of
the world," Travis points out. "You had no dynamics back then;
frankly, you were boring."
"I can't live with someone else calling the shots," Jet shrugs,
watching the sidewalk slide by as the limo turns onto 10th street.
"I get it," Travis nods, "no one who strives for greatness can hope
to achieve it at someone else's whim. No one who isn't merely a
puppet."
"Well," Jet turns back to grin at his partner, "who wants a Mitt
Romney for World Champion?"
----------
---------
No one understands why Jet trains alone.
Whether he's playing out a new dance routine, practicing kicks on
the training dummy, or simply jumping rope, he prefers the lights
dim, the door locked, and the gym empty.
There are reasons that have been speculated amongst the PMN
upper management, but Pepper Phoenix, cloudcuckoolander
though he may be, is the only one to hit near the mark.
"He's haunted by something," Pepper whispers to Mark Reznik
outside the door, after Mark had tried the latch. Pepper stares in
through the window for a few more minutes, before shaking his
head. He and Mark shrug and walk away.
Finishing up a set of knee strikes against the heavy bag, Jet
reaches out and settles the swinging before reaching for a towel.
He wipes sweat from his brow, and ruffles his hair before sitting
down on a nearby bench.
He begins untaping his otherwise bare feet as the vibration of the
phone in his bag catches his attention. He retrieves it and reads
the latest tweet from Travis, about being able to kill things that
bleed, and he smirks.
He nearly tosses the phone back into the bag, but hesitates. He
scrolls through the contacts suddenly, and stops when he reaches
Jezebel Saint.
His thumb hovers over the call button for an eternity.
Finally he lets out the breath he was holding, and tosses the
phone into the bag anyway.
There a few moments of consideration, before he shakes his head
and goes back to unwrapping his sole.
----------
“There could have been a place in my world for a Zane Scott,” he shakes his head, “every powerful organization needs it’s hired muscle, but my entire conglomerate is an advanced musculoskeletal system, in which the various parts are strong enough to flex their own influence. A thinking man, the kind of man that the Cross Hemisphere Champion chooses to hide behind his neanderthal brow, who is also strong enough to hunt down and kill his prey with his bare hands is the most dangerous type of man there is, and I’d have been proud to count him amongst my acquaintances, if not allies. But his obfuscating stupidity won’t allow him to advance, and his stubborn loyalty to a masked chessmaster renders him incapable of looking toward the greater rewards that could await him. So be it.”
----------
The ambulance bay doors slam open.
Several men burst through with a stretcher, loaded with the body
of a twenty something with a breathing bag over his face. His left
jeans leg has been cut away, and two angry red marks have
swelled below his kneecap. Blood pours from a gash across his
right temple.
"Snakebite! Snakebite here!"
It's been a busy day for the ER, and the crowd of rushing
orderlies, nurses, doctors, drivers, and the like are making it hard
for the stretcher bearers to get through. One EMT is shouting
instructions over the din to his partner, who quickly unwraps a
syringe and injects it without the ritual squirt that a film buff might
have come to expect.
"Move aside!!! I've got a 1-eleven here with coagulopathy setting
in!"
A triage nurse rushes over and slaps on a blood pressure cuff.
She begins shouting vitals to anyone who might be paying
enough attention to help. The patient's blood pressure is
dropping rapidly; he's hemorrhaging.
The stretcher has come to a dead standstill. The fourteen-vehicle
accident that happened forty minutes ago has turned the hospital
into a bottleneck. The driver looks over the stretcher toward the
EMT who is still trying to keep him breathing, and the look they
share is grim. He's going to die.
A hand pushes through a group of policemen to the left of the
stretcher, and seizes the bar over the patient's left shoulder.
Wrenching it from the grasp of the ambulance jockeys, Jet
Somers, replete in scrubs, forces through the throng. It parts
before him, like the Yam Suph before Mošeh, and he rushes the
patient down the hallway, only knocking four people out of the
way in the process.
The three who had attended the victim before rush to keep up as
Jet pauses for seconds at each room he comes to, ducking his
head in to check for space. Finally, he notices a man getting a ring
finger stitched back on, and he nearly topples the stretcher as he
slides into a drift and pushes it into the room.
The surgeon and nurses gasp as Jet slings the stretcher into
place next to the hospital bed, he makes a quarter turn only long
enough to indicate a chair that would be much better suited to
reattaching a digit, and the doctor scrambles to move the less
critical patient.
The four of them don't even do a three count before lifting the
snakebite victim onto the bed. Jet steps out of the way, and lets
the staff go to work.
----------
----------
The eastern wing of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago is
still under construction. The workmen have gone home for the
weekend.
The steady creak and slide of gurney wheels announce the
presence of someone pushing a stretcher through the void of the
unfinished halls. Jet Somers slowly stalks behind the cart that he
pushes, blood trickle still staining the sheets from the snakebite
victim he saved earlier.
As he walks, his eyes are blank, pupils unresponsive to the naked
bulbs that dangle above him.
He suddenly turns and slams the stretcher through a workroom
door that isn’t quite big enough for it. Metal grinds and whines
against the scarred doorframe as he doesn’t slow down. He hits a
junk pile of disused medical equipment haphazardly tossed into
the floor, and the stretcher up-ends into the pile. Without taking
his eyes off the highest end of the cart, he reaches to the left and
lifts a quart can of black lacquer.
His movements are stiff but measured as he splashes the paint
across the stretcher and detritus below it. To his right, a black can
of hammered texture spray paint is retrieved. He doesn’t so much
coat the pile of twisted metal and linen as randomly create a
choking cloud of chemical that settles like acid rain onto the
equipment.
“Hrm,” the grunt escapes his throat without his lips parting, and
he turns to go.
"What do you think your little clave is going to think of you if they
ever find out about your extra curricular activities?"
The voice, sweet but jarring, causes Jet to spin away from the
doorway.
If not for the blood splattering, she'd be just as radiant and
gorgeous as the last time he'd actually seen her. Still in yoga
pants and sports bra, the gaping wound in her chest still fresh
and oozing, Jenny sits upon the bare table at the bag of the
room. Her left leg dangles, a white tennis shoe with a single drop
of blood on the laces, hovering over the junk pile. She has pulled
the other leg up, so that her knee touches her chest opposite the
gunshot, and her fingers are laced around her knee.
"I don't see how they'd be surprised to know I volunteer in my
spare time," Jet shrugs, "being a humanitarian was kinda my thing
before I became a professional entertainer."
She pointedly scans the room, and snorts, before changing the
subject.
"Will he live?"
"They got the antivenin into him in time," Jet nods, "he'll pull
through. Gonna have some great scars, though."
"So what happened?"
"Screwing around with an Eastern Diamondback, got bit, fell and
cracked his egg on a cinder block" Jet shakes his own butterfly
stitched head, "I can relate."
"Oh really?"
"Sure," Opie flashes his trademark grin, "sometimes you prod the
giant just to say you can."
"And then you end up in intensive care, and..."
"And then," Jet crosses his arms and stares at his late dance
instructor, "you get better, and you come back stronger, and you
find the rattlesnake's nest, and you cut his head off with a
spade."
"...or you die from your wounds."
"Well, you'd be the expert," he mutters, looking away.
The hurt on her face can't be ignored. As the champion's face
goes slack, you can tell he immediately regrets the snark. He
steps forward, and reaches out, but as his fingertips brush her
face, she dissolves violently, an ectoplasmic cloud which splashes
the wall behind the table.
For a confused moment, he can't remember if he had sloshed the
paint in that direction or not.
----------
“I won't sit here and make claims that I will crush him, cripple him, end his career, whatever,” Jet’s stare could burn holes in bricks,
“What I will promise is that no matter the outcome, he won't stop me. I have become a god with or without gold. If he should end up wearing the belt, he'll still kneel before his shadowy daimyo.”
The champion’s deep breaths begin to calm down as he nears the end of his monologue… and the scene goes black…
----------
A light clicks on over a kitchen sink. The apartment Jet inherited
from his sister, transformed ages ago into a cave all in black, is
austere and bare.
In the cold light, Jet places the UGWC World Heavyweight
Championship upon the counter. For a long time he stares at the
gold, looking at his own reflection in it, seeing it for what his
subjects see it: a symbol. A symbol that he created. It no longer
represents a rapist, a cheater, a fear monger, or a shady
executive. For now, it has even more weight than the Cross
Hemisphere Championship, perhaps for the first time ever. He
brought that symbolism to it, and should this be the last night he
is the champion, that symbolism will die.
He thinks back to the end of his conversation with Ratana...
His hand leaves his side, and a swath of black paint is created
with the four inch brush he grips. The gold marred, his face obscured, he nods, and
clicks the light off.
The weather forecast predicted a wintry relapse today, but no
meteorologist could have called for the blizzard of stationery
which drifts lazily toward the passersby on the sidewalks of West
57th street in New York City.
Pause. Leaflets freeze in midair.
In double time, the papers reverse toward the 38th story of the
Black Rock, gathering together where a spinning manila folder
flaps closed after collecting them all.
----------
“So, are you going to let me order wine this time?” Ratana Som flashes a coy smile across the burgundy tabletop at Jet Somers, who is still perusing the menu. “This may be the last time I get to have dinner with someone so successful.”
“I doubt that,” he doesn’t look up, “but go ahead.”
“Zane Scott is a monster,” she teases, “the last time you went up against someone as powerful, you were embarrassed, and he went on to defend against another opponent the same night.”
“Zane Scott is no Tyvola,” Jet finally glances her way, but quickly returns his gaze to the appetizers.
“Is this where you begin your requisite diatribe explaining why you are better than he is?” his date invites.
Jet folds the menu, turns to his left to shake his head at the approaching waiter, and clears his throat.
“I doubt that,” he doesn’t look up, “but go ahead.”
“Zane Scott is a monster,” she teases, “the last time you went up against someone as powerful, you were embarrassed, and he went on to defend against another opponent the same night.”
“Zane Scott is no Tyvola,” Jet finally glances her way, but quickly returns his gaze to the appetizers.
“Is this where you begin your requisite diatribe explaining why you are better than he is?” his date invites.
Jet folds the menu, turns to his left to shake his head at the approaching waiter, and clears his throat.
---------
It's tense in the boardroom. Despite the cooler weather, the
collection of suited businessmen bead sweat across their
foreheads. At one end of the table, Leslie Moonves, CEO of the
former Viacom empire, rests his chin upon his clasped hands,
elbows propped on the table. A ghost of a smile paints his
features as he watches Travis Pierce examine the contents of the
manila folder.
He nods to the attendant who has been refilling water glasses,
and the attendant gives the slightest nod before stepping toward
one of the eight foot picture windows. He releases a latch, and
opens the window just enough to let a wisp of winter breeze
course through the sweltering conference room.
After an agonizingly long interim, Travis Pierce collects the
contents of the folder and places it on the table. He folds his
hands over it, then smiles toward Moonves. Without breaking the
smile, he slides the file to his left, to be picked up by Jet Somers.
Pierce continues the stare for what he deems an appropriate
amount of time for his partner to have gathered the gist of the
March Madness sponsorship deal, then turns slowly to meet The
Wild Card's eyes.
Jet screws up his mouth, nods, and closes the file. He turns to his
right and finds himself sharing a meaningful look with Pierce. It
lasts for nearly forty five seconds before they nod to one another.
In a moment, they have both pushed their plush seats back and
stood. They turn, and take a step toward the double doors.
"Ahem," Moonves clears his throat, the ghost of a smile exorcised.
With a flourish, Jet sweeps his left arm out, sending the entire file
sailing out the cracked window.
----------
“I’m not too full of his favorite and overused accusation, ‘hubris,’ to understand that I could very well be pinned at Massive Melee tomorrow,” Jet admits, “I’ve openly admitted before that he could best me one on one. I’ve seen him firsthand dismantle men who were better than he is in every way. Anyone who watched Synergy saw that he was even able to take me apart in seconds, when I was in full steam offensive against him. I know that my reign is in jeopardy.”
He sips from a water glass, his calm belying the worry he speaks of.
“Zane Scott could very well take my championship,” Jet shrugs, “but then, what will he have? A double reign over a foundering organization. What good will he do for it? How much influence will those belts have when UGWC folds, crippled from disinterest, just like the Cooperative Division did after he swiped those championships from me? And in the end, who is the reigning Cooperative Champion, forever and ever?”
“Do you honestly think Zane Scott is the savior UGWC needs right now?” Jet stifles a chuckle, “Can he even effectively use that influence without first receiving orders from on high? I happen to know the man giving those orders made it his personal mission to scuttle one of our company’s parent federations, how much trust can the Consortium put in one of his patsy’s to spearhead the revolution that will put UGWC back on the map?”
He sips from a water glass, his calm belying the worry he speaks of.
“Zane Scott could very well take my championship,” Jet shrugs, “but then, what will he have? A double reign over a foundering organization. What good will he do for it? How much influence will those belts have when UGWC folds, crippled from disinterest, just like the Cooperative Division did after he swiped those championships from me? And in the end, who is the reigning Cooperative Champion, forever and ever?”
“Do you honestly think Zane Scott is the savior UGWC needs right now?” Jet stifles a chuckle, “Can he even effectively use that influence without first receiving orders from on high? I happen to know the man giving those orders made it his personal mission to scuttle one of our company’s parent federations, how much trust can the Consortium put in one of his patsy’s to spearhead the revolution that will put UGWC back on the map?”
----------
"You've developed quite a flair for the dramatic," Travis comments
to his partner as they pull on overcoats outside the CBS Building.
Behind them, excited tourists chuckle as they snatch papers from
the air.
"You think so?" Jet leads them toward the sidewalk where a
limousine waits. The white gloved driver pulls open the door, and
Opie gestures for Travis to get in first.
As the door slams behind him, Jet cracks the window an inch. He
breathes in the cold, refreshing northern air.
"You've come a long way from the directionless thug who was
content to follow the Klaus von Knorres and Alan Fernandez's of
the world," Travis points out. "You had no dynamics back then;
frankly, you were boring."
"I can't live with someone else calling the shots," Jet shrugs,
watching the sidewalk slide by as the limo turns onto 10th street.
"I get it," Travis nods, "no one who strives for greatness can hope
to achieve it at someone else's whim. No one who isn't merely a
puppet."
"Well," Jet turns back to grin at his partner, "who wants a Mitt
Romney for World Champion?"
----------
“On the other hand,” Jet continues, “I could singlehandedly redeem this economic nightmare without the influence of the World Championship. Mark me, Zane Scott has the physical prowess to take my title. He doesn’t have the know how or the support from his masters to remove my legacy, or my power, or my success. If he struck my name from the UGWC history books, if he ripped down every Jet Somers poster, if he burned every second of archival footage that featured Jet Somers revolutionizing the industry at every turn, he still won’t have stolen me from the world. You can kill a man, but you can’t kill a legend.”
Ratana nods, agreeing that Jet’s presence is outside the influence of UGWC and it’s members.
Ratana nods, agreeing that Jet’s presence is outside the influence of UGWC and it’s members.
---------
No one understands why Jet trains alone.
Whether he's playing out a new dance routine, practicing kicks on
the training dummy, or simply jumping rope, he prefers the lights
dim, the door locked, and the gym empty.
There are reasons that have been speculated amongst the PMN
upper management, but Pepper Phoenix, cloudcuckoolander
though he may be, is the only one to hit near the mark.
"He's haunted by something," Pepper whispers to Mark Reznik
outside the door, after Mark had tried the latch. Pepper stares in
through the window for a few more minutes, before shaking his
head. He and Mark shrug and walk away.
Finishing up a set of knee strikes against the heavy bag, Jet
reaches out and settles the swinging before reaching for a towel.
He wipes sweat from his brow, and ruffles his hair before sitting
down on a nearby bench.
He begins untaping his otherwise bare feet as the vibration of the
phone in his bag catches his attention. He retrieves it and reads
the latest tweet from Travis, about being able to kill things that
bleed, and he smirks.
He nearly tosses the phone back into the bag, but hesitates. He
scrolls through the contacts suddenly, and stops when he reaches
Jezebel Saint.
His thumb hovers over the call button for an eternity.
Finally he lets out the breath he was holding, and tosses the
phone into the bag anyway.
There a few moments of consideration, before he shakes his head
and goes back to unwrapping his sole.
----------
“There could have been a place in my world for a Zane Scott,” he shakes his head, “every powerful organization needs it’s hired muscle, but my entire conglomerate is an advanced musculoskeletal system, in which the various parts are strong enough to flex their own influence. A thinking man, the kind of man that the Cross Hemisphere Champion chooses to hide behind his neanderthal brow, who is also strong enough to hunt down and kill his prey with his bare hands is the most dangerous type of man there is, and I’d have been proud to count him amongst my acquaintances, if not allies. But his obfuscating stupidity won’t allow him to advance, and his stubborn loyalty to a masked chessmaster renders him incapable of looking toward the greater rewards that could await him. So be it.”
----------
The ambulance bay doors slam open.
Several men burst through with a stretcher, loaded with the body
of a twenty something with a breathing bag over his face. His left
jeans leg has been cut away, and two angry red marks have
swelled below his kneecap. Blood pours from a gash across his
right temple.
"Snakebite! Snakebite here!"
It's been a busy day for the ER, and the crowd of rushing
orderlies, nurses, doctors, drivers, and the like are making it hard
for the stretcher bearers to get through. One EMT is shouting
instructions over the din to his partner, who quickly unwraps a
syringe and injects it without the ritual squirt that a film buff might
have come to expect.
"Move aside!!! I've got a 1-eleven here with coagulopathy setting
in!"
A triage nurse rushes over and slaps on a blood pressure cuff.
She begins shouting vitals to anyone who might be paying
enough attention to help. The patient's blood pressure is
dropping rapidly; he's hemorrhaging.
The stretcher has come to a dead standstill. The fourteen-vehicle
accident that happened forty minutes ago has turned the hospital
into a bottleneck. The driver looks over the stretcher toward the
EMT who is still trying to keep him breathing, and the look they
share is grim. He's going to die.
A hand pushes through a group of policemen to the left of the
stretcher, and seizes the bar over the patient's left shoulder.
Wrenching it from the grasp of the ambulance jockeys, Jet
Somers, replete in scrubs, forces through the throng. It parts
before him, like the Yam Suph before Mošeh, and he rushes the
patient down the hallway, only knocking four people out of the
way in the process.
The three who had attended the victim before rush to keep up as
Jet pauses for seconds at each room he comes to, ducking his
head in to check for space. Finally, he notices a man getting a ring
finger stitched back on, and he nearly topples the stretcher as he
slides into a drift and pushes it into the room.
The surgeon and nurses gasp as Jet slings the stretcher into
place next to the hospital bed, he makes a quarter turn only long
enough to indicate a chair that would be much better suited to
reattaching a digit, and the doctor scrambles to move the less
critical patient.
The four of them don't even do a three count before lifting the
snakebite victim onto the bed. Jet steps out of the way, and lets
the staff go to work.
----------
“So what we have is a puppet,” Jet’s smirk causes Ratana to roll her eyes. She hates grandstanding.
“And those with their fists jammed up his tailpipe have instructed him to become a double champion. They have instructed him to gain what they hope is an immeasurable amount of influence so that they will have a foothold in UGWC. You can barely buy that unflinching kind of loyalty. It’s usually reserved for religious fanatics who sway orgasmically while choirs praise in southern musical twang. Jump for them. Dance for them. Attack for them, dog.”
He sets the water glass down too hard, and two cubes slosh over the rim, ski across the table and pitch over the edge. More than a few pairs of eyes turn toward the couple.
“But no matter how high you climb for them,” he spits, “you’ll never enjoy the respect, adoration, and status that those of us who have built a history have attained. There’s a reason why Donovan Hastings still manages to get included in every major event and championship contendership contest, despite being eighty six years old and not tasting gold in years. A self built legacy. Your way was practically bought and paid for, while the rest of us pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. You’ll never have a legacy as large as mine. You’ll never have the love of the fans. You’ll never have the respect of your peers. You might beat me, but I promise you’ll never defeat me.”
“And those with their fists jammed up his tailpipe have instructed him to become a double champion. They have instructed him to gain what they hope is an immeasurable amount of influence so that they will have a foothold in UGWC. You can barely buy that unflinching kind of loyalty. It’s usually reserved for religious fanatics who sway orgasmically while choirs praise in southern musical twang. Jump for them. Dance for them. Attack for them, dog.”
He sets the water glass down too hard, and two cubes slosh over the rim, ski across the table and pitch over the edge. More than a few pairs of eyes turn toward the couple.
“But no matter how high you climb for them,” he spits, “you’ll never enjoy the respect, adoration, and status that those of us who have built a history have attained. There’s a reason why Donovan Hastings still manages to get included in every major event and championship contendership contest, despite being eighty six years old and not tasting gold in years. A self built legacy. Your way was practically bought and paid for, while the rest of us pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. You’ll never have a legacy as large as mine. You’ll never have the love of the fans. You’ll never have the respect of your peers. You might beat me, but I promise you’ll never defeat me.”
----------
The eastern wing of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago is
still under construction. The workmen have gone home for the
weekend.
The steady creak and slide of gurney wheels announce the
presence of someone pushing a stretcher through the void of the
unfinished halls. Jet Somers slowly stalks behind the cart that he
pushes, blood trickle still staining the sheets from the snakebite
victim he saved earlier.
As he walks, his eyes are blank, pupils unresponsive to the naked
bulbs that dangle above him.
He suddenly turns and slams the stretcher through a workroom
door that isn’t quite big enough for it. Metal grinds and whines
against the scarred doorframe as he doesn’t slow down. He hits a
junk pile of disused medical equipment haphazardly tossed into
the floor, and the stretcher up-ends into the pile. Without taking
his eyes off the highest end of the cart, he reaches to the left and
lifts a quart can of black lacquer.
His movements are stiff but measured as he splashes the paint
across the stretcher and detritus below it. To his right, a black can
of hammered texture spray paint is retrieved. He doesn’t so much
coat the pile of twisted metal and linen as randomly create a
choking cloud of chemical that settles like acid rain onto the
equipment.
“Hrm,” the grunt escapes his throat without his lips parting, and
he turns to go.
"What do you think your little clave is going to think of you if they
ever find out about your extra curricular activities?"
The voice, sweet but jarring, causes Jet to spin away from the
doorway.
If not for the blood splattering, she'd be just as radiant and
gorgeous as the last time he'd actually seen her. Still in yoga
pants and sports bra, the gaping wound in her chest still fresh
and oozing, Jenny sits upon the bare table at the bag of the
room. Her left leg dangles, a white tennis shoe with a single drop
of blood on the laces, hovering over the junk pile. She has pulled
the other leg up, so that her knee touches her chest opposite the
gunshot, and her fingers are laced around her knee.
"I don't see how they'd be surprised to know I volunteer in my
spare time," Jet shrugs, "being a humanitarian was kinda my thing
before I became a professional entertainer."
She pointedly scans the room, and snorts, before changing the
subject.
"Will he live?"
"They got the antivenin into him in time," Jet nods, "he'll pull
through. Gonna have some great scars, though."
"So what happened?"
"Screwing around with an Eastern Diamondback, got bit, fell and
cracked his egg on a cinder block" Jet shakes his own butterfly
stitched head, "I can relate."
"Oh really?"
"Sure," Opie flashes his trademark grin, "sometimes you prod the
giant just to say you can."
"And then you end up in intensive care, and..."
"And then," Jet crosses his arms and stares at his late dance
instructor, "you get better, and you come back stronger, and you
find the rattlesnake's nest, and you cut his head off with a
spade."
"...or you die from your wounds."
"Well, you'd be the expert," he mutters, looking away.
The hurt on her face can't be ignored. As the champion's face
goes slack, you can tell he immediately regrets the snark. He
steps forward, and reaches out, but as his fingertips brush her
face, she dissolves violently, an ectoplasmic cloud which splashes
the wall behind the table.
For a confused moment, he can't remember if he had sloshed the
paint in that direction or not.
----------
“I won't sit here and make claims that I will crush him, cripple him, end his career, whatever,” Jet’s stare could burn holes in bricks,
“What I will promise is that no matter the outcome, he won't stop me. I have become a god with or without gold. If he should end up wearing the belt, he'll still kneel before his shadowy daimyo.”
The champion’s deep breaths begin to calm down as he nears the end of his monologue… and the scene goes black…
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A light clicks on over a kitchen sink. The apartment Jet inherited
from his sister, transformed ages ago into a cave all in black, is
austere and bare.
In the cold light, Jet places the UGWC World Heavyweight
Championship upon the counter. For a long time he stares at the
gold, looking at his own reflection in it, seeing it for what his
subjects see it: a symbol. A symbol that he created. It no longer
represents a rapist, a cheater, a fear monger, or a shady
executive. For now, it has even more weight than the Cross
Hemisphere Championship, perhaps for the first time ever. He
brought that symbolism to it, and should this be the last night he
is the champion, that symbolism will die.
He thinks back to the end of his conversation with Ratana...
“…If I didn't know that my having this belt will eat at you after you've pointlessly thrown your all into this war, I'd simply hand the damned thing over to you, give the mutt his bone, and kick you're starving ribs while you slink out through doggy door. What is this but another crown in my growing menagerie? You might defeat me, but I still own you, just like I own every whimpering hound who now begs at the table of the mighty Piercing Media Network. You might get to sit in my chair for a while, but you'll never dethrone me. I am not this championship, and I won’t let it define me, as you are hoping it will define you. For as long as I hold it, be it for months to come, or one more night, I will define it instead…”
His hand leaves his side, and a swath of black paint is created
with the four inch brush he grips. The gold marred, his face obscured, he nods, and
clicks the light off.