Post by Jet Somers on Oct 26, 2017 19:20:24 GMT -5
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
----------
Jet watches from the ring, where he has just taken successive finishing removers, as Rogan MacLean exits from the stage area. It took an Egregious Use of Force, a Call of Cthulu, a Murderous Intent, and a Destiny’s Call to deliver the message, and it couldn’t be clearer—Rogan wasn’t interested in making history as one half of the first Cooperative Champions in history to compete for the UGWC World Championship. For someone so desperate to make a lasting impression, for one who has done little more than depend on the drive and determination of the people he associates himself with, it was a baffling move.
Jet drops down out of the ring, ignoring the mix of crowd reactions that take on a background buzz in his mind. His own actions were being questioned heavily lately. Constant Somers naysayers would view this is Jet latching on to yet another group in a desperate play for relevance. Those who hadn’t been around to know his history would view the entire group with contempt, point out how predictable the swerve had been.
As he parts the curtain and walks through, once again without championship gold, he shrugs off the doubt. The reveal was only smoke and mirrors, it wasn’t the meat of the prospect. Everyone had been so focused on being clever, on stroking their own egos about being able to figure out who was behind the owl masks, that they’d missed what the Court had been doing right under their noses.
Control. That’s what it had been about. For a practical dynasty’s worth of time, Jet and his contemporaries had led this company, both in years of struggle and of plenty. Then, for the last year and a half, they’d been painted as stubborn, unyielding tyrants who jealously guarded their legacies as the top draws in UGWC. Dissidents and neophytes had made spent the year assigning guilt and blame, hoping to shame the pillars of this company into relinquishing the status they’d worked so hard to achieve. They had a control that was earned through years of dedication and sacrifice, and these upstarts wanted to wrest that away from them.
Jet enters his locker room and steps into the bathroom gingerly. As he steps out of his shorts, he catches the reflection of the nine-starred tattoo on his back. That one word that kept being repeated over the past twelve months—chaos—had become a rally point, a mantra that those who wanted to pull down the foundations of this promotion had repeated ad finitum until it had nearly lost its meaning. Chaos was a hollow explanation, nearly an excuse, for any hastily concocted, directionless plot. Chaos was a crutch they leaned on when success was fleeting.
He turns around and examines the Flamel on his chest. The problem was, Jet and his colleagues had allowed too much time to go by while the resistance had sown their discord. Sure, they’d stood up in the ring, offering competition, opposing the rise of those novices and anarchists—but no more than they had one another, or anyone who had been privileged enough to be a part of this roster at any time in the past. They were set up as elitists instead of healthy competition, and even when they’d offered a show of respectful rivalry, the disdain didn’t change. They’d never be seen as anything more than a closed circle of home federation aristocrats. So to hell with anyone who wasn’t them.
The Court had the means to assume the villainous mantle they’d been accused of wearing; the one resource they had in excess was purse money, and so, if they couldn’t engender a spirit of professional, if intense, rivalry without being seen as monsters, then they would become the blackguards. The Piecing Media Network had claimed to own this roster by sheer force of being the perfect mix of talent and entertainment; the Court would come to own it by buying it hand over fist.
Finally, Jet looks down at the devil’s head tattoo on his inner forearm.
Chaos was one more thing. A debt unpaid. A debt that payment would come due on come Monday at Battleground. Jet intended for Rogan to pay that debt in full. With interest.
----------
This is no illusion—this is eternity, My eternity, and you are lost in it, lost forever, never to find your way back. You are eternal now, and condemned to wander in the black…after you meet Me face to face, that is.
----------
Victoria Jensen kneels before a single candle placed upright on the floor, he hands folded in her lap. She wears a white sampot skirt shot through with gold and purple thread, and her av dai puon blouse is yellow with a white and purple floral pattern. A white and yellow gingham scarf crosses her chest from her right shoulder to her left hip. Her dark blonde hair is done up in a complex, woven updo, and a pearled tiara holds it in place. She raises her chin and begins to speak.
“Suffering. All beings are forms of matter, and therefore subject to suffering. We approach a battleground of the mind in which six warriors will meet and attempt to achieve the four noble truths by confronting their own suffering: their inability to become or remain the yogi of our microcosm for long enough to reach nirvana. The one who learns to walk the eightfold path will use the tetragram to become enlightened at Horizons. The cycle of birth and rebirth which embodies the World Championship is one which has not seen liberation since Travis Roberts brought zen to the honor.”
“Rogan MacLean will not escape the cycle on Monday. His attachment to chaos and craving for influence will cost him, and the role of World Champion will be reincarnated as Jet Somers.”
“The Wild Card has conquered all forms of suffering. Through proper speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration, view, and resolve, the new World Champion will bring to bear all that he has learned along his long path of suffering.”
“He will be tested at Horizons. The physical elements of matter will manifest in some form. Not space, of course, because that posterior orifice will waste the opportunity to settle a grudge. It may come in the form of fire, an eternal energy that lies beneath all the processes in this company, but the same energy fuels aging, decay, and digestion. It may come in the form of water, the blood, sweat and tears that must be shed time and time again as if from a bottomless well for no other purpose than to quench the thirsts of others. Perhaps it will take appear as earth, the muscles, bones, and sinews built to inflict damage, and built to receive damage in equal measure. Or it may be as empty as air, the empty whispered words that repeat history ad infinitum without moving forward. If he is truly deserving, the new World Champion will see the challenge will present as consciousness, the embodiment of emotion and sensation. This would provide the most appropriate challenge to affirm his liberation from the path of suffering as he battles to resist hate, vengeance, disgust, rage, and chaos.”
“By surmounting this challenge will Jet liberate the World Championship from the nearly inexorable pattern it has fallen into this year, and give it an enlightened reign that escapes the rinse and repeat karma of handing it off from one inadequate champion to another.”
----------
The Ritual of Chüd is a battle of wills, and is the only way to defeat the creature.
----------
Jet pulls a simple black t-shirt on over his tattoos, a white skull emblazoned across the entire torso.
“It’s not hard to understand what you’ve wanted most since you arrived, Rogan. It’s influence. You’ve been driven to make your mark on this industry ever since you wasted twenty minutes in the Massive Melee only to be eclipsed by the master of that match, Eden Morgan. When you battled in Japan, only to return and dominate the first day of Wrestlestock and win your first Chaos Championship, despite being crucified on a cross made of barbed wire, you were certain your name was being etched into the UGWC Annals. You didn’t slow down at In Your Hands despite failing to defend on your first outing as Chaos Champion, and you put Alex Stein in your rearview mirror while you moved on to destroy one of the greatest, most innovative icons this business has ever seen in his last match ever, then appropriated his gimmick as a symbol of your influence over the target demographic. You were the Warped Junior Heavyweight Champion, you were competing in multiple promotions, and the Engine had started to roll.”
“But you made a mistake there, didn’t you? You allowed others to corrupt your influence. At Outlast your considerable mark blackballed you only as ‘the guy who once had a memorable feud with Mil Vidas, Jr.,’ while Ichabod and Holden Orson used your budding philosophy to declare war on the industry. Your vision was corrupted and commandeered, and your own personal impact began to fade. From there on, you were a faceless quarter of the whole, sharing the limelight, no one of you able to claim full responsibility of the glory of being a champion. Your flawed group model buried you, and, despite holding half the gold available for such a long time, your own personal contribution to this brand was lessened considerably.”
“That took a toll on you didn’t it? You fought for your right to be considered an effectual member of the Engine. Battleground, Horizons, you became desperate to leave some lasting legacy that you could claim as your own. This led you to commit an unforgiveable sin; you crushed one of my best friends’ neck, you did it outside the confines of a match, you did it after you’d already beaten him and secured your continued participation in shared glory. It wasn’t revenge for his giving your face a permanent case of Christmas cheer, and it wasn’t necessary for anything but to attempt to make a statement. A statement that Rogan MacLean could change the course of an entertainment professional’s career with one cowardly leap.”
He tucks the shirt into black tactical pants.
“Oh, that’s not what you called it, no, you said it was a symbol of your ability to eliminate the old guard, to make way for those who didn’t have a chance to rise in the face of the oppressors who held them down. How noble. And what was your contribution to that rising caste? Jason Ingalls? Are you kidding me? You retired my brother, nearly killed him, so you could just keep tormenting a man he’d tired himself out torturing? What a brilliant plan; you’d unseat the veterans, and then try to make your mark by imprinting your doctrine on the inbound talent by… repeating the methods of those same veterans? Absolute enlightenment, I’m telling you.”
“Shouldn’t the plan have been to offer them opportunities at the championships the four of you were so jealously playing monkey in the middle with in an effort to confuse your opponents? I’m sorry… I mean three of you… two?”
Jet pulls on a belt over his waist with an array of bullets, grenades, knifes, and holsters.
“You see, it was here that the cracks in the machine really started to show, and your ‘unstoppable’ Engine started to come apart. Gabriel and Ichabod put up a valiant effort to mask what was happening, but we all saw it. Holden’s injury that cost your team their hard earned World Championship match, and then put him out of action for so long. Synergies where it seemed you weren’t even there. The rest of your team pulling double duty to make up for the other half’s lack of dedication. Little by little the gold started to disappear, and the young talent actually started to eclipse you, with only us veterans to keep them in check. When Sex and Violence crushed your Cooperative Championship reign at Rise or Fall, the Engine was as good as stalled. How would you leave a lasting impression when you weren’t even here?”
“By Seven Deadly Sins, you’d finally admitted it to one another; your faction was finished, and who was the odd man out? Who was asked to leave because his influence could no longer drive the Engine forward? We all smirked behind our hands as the remaining two champions in the group forced you to walk away, not only from your mission, but from the company altogether.”
He pulls on a long, leather duster over the outfit.
“Your dream of leaving your mark was finished, the only significant contributions left behind were standing aside to let Mil Vidas, Jr do the impossible by dethroning Travis Roberts, and creating your own replacement in Jason Ingalls.”
“You floated around out there in the Illinois wilderness, trying to figure out where you went wrong, until you thought you saw your opportunity. Gabriel Baal had finally managed to capture the lightning in a bottle that had eluded your entire group for so long, and your simple mind put it together: you wanted a piece of what he was enjoying again. Only this time, you’d be on the other side. The problem is, no one cared about your return until the fans thought it would be funny to gift you with the most effective cooperative partner in history, and finally, unexpectedly, you started to move toward the success your own designs could have never granted.”
Finally, he picks up an M16, and stands before a mirror.
“Fast forward to outlast, here’s the EOC reject being given the World championship thanks to the influence of the Court. That’s how that works, right? If there’s a faction somehow even tangentially involved, then the champion owes his reign to them. Wouldn’t Mil Vidas, Jr agree?”
“You claim your purpose is to be the true engine of chaos, to be the originator of the concept, to be the only person who truly understands what chaos is. How disappointing to find out that your fate, like everyone else’s is in someone else’s hands.”
The costume is complete. He’s ready for Killian’s Halloween party. He didn’t know if Frank Castle with a shoulder-length cut and full beard would be appropriate, but he felt good as The Punisher.
