Post by Jet Somers on Dec 12, 2009 0:53:20 GMT -5
Violent nonstop gusts of wind whip across Southern California, knocking over trees, bending fences, ripping shingles from roofs. Against the window of the apartment shared by Jezebel, Jet, and Sherry, random twigs and broken branches assault and pat out an intermittant tattoo, an external stimuli which prompts images in the dreams of Somers. In his mind, the drama begins, a review of the stimuli received from the hell he has committed himself to over the last four months.
Internal reel:
Jet is stepping through a noisy wood. The night is black, moonless, yet the trees and undergrowth are lit as if from within, an ethereal light that gives the entire sylvan setting a surreal glow. The noises are a rolling thunder of frantic and hungry animal calls, and the panic within Jet builds. He feels the fight or flight instinct beginning to take over, but his senses are overloading with his confusion of where to fly or what to fight. He balls his fists, curls them against his temples, and lets out a guttural snarl. When he finishes the snarl and opens his eyes, the sounds have stopped, but now a figure stands before hiim.
Standing well over seven feet tall, the phantom is dressed head to toe with a dusty black cape. Jet goes into a defensive crouch as the oversized figure glides toward him amongst stereotypical fog. Just as the figure gets within pouncing range, it swings a great nine foot scythe out of midair, the blade digging into the very fabric of reality and tearing it asunder. The folds of the universe flap in an unnaturally strong wind and Jet slides from his feet and into the chasm, and it's right here that you'd expect the metal lick to kick in as Jet slow falls through the planes.
Jet falls through a great cavern, headed directly for a gondola in the middle of a huge underground river. He lands, of course, headfirst in the boat, which looks to have been constructed entirely of human skeletons, clutching each other for support in some sort of silent agony. In the prow of the boat stands none other than Salem. He turns to Jet, drawing his punt out of the water.
"You have been chosen to face the horrors of the Inferno, Jet. Somewhere on the other side of Tartarus, you must find the great Betrayer and defeat him. Only then will your soul be purified and released from this torment."
Jet raises an eyebrow, "You want me to fight Satan?"
"Do you have your payment? All must pay the ferryman to cross into the Underworld."
Jet pats his pockets, coming up empty. He shrugs, but Salem produces a scroll and unfurls it. It's a GIW wrestling contract, and Salem deftly pricks Jet's arm with a quill before indicating the line where Jet must sign. Jet looks completely confused as he scribbles his signature on the scroll, and the gondola comes to rest on the shore.
Jet steps ashore, and looks around himself. The desolate darkness is featureless, only the cold stone ground rolling out into the shadow. As Jet takes a step forward, Salem calls out as he pushes the punt against the shore, "Abandon all hope!"
Jet rolls his eyes and continues into the darkness. It isn't long before he encounters a bevy of gauzy wraiths, floating about as if lost, looks of pained confusion twisting their faces. He almost comes to a full stop when he notices a shade of Moss Edwards float past, his haunted eyes made unnerving by resembling twin damaged filmstrips, playing some black and white silent classic at varying speeds. A few seconds later, JK floats by, his gaze staring longingly down the dark path that Jet is following, with darting glances back toward the river. Jet doesn't stick around to see if JK decides to descend deeper into the blackness.
The smell is like every bad stereotype of an old person all rolled into one, condensed, and effervesced every three second in the worlds greatest vaporizer. Moth balls. Hard candy. Urine. Pipe tobacco. Denture Cream. Bengay. As Somers approaches an intersection of many roads, he notices a great sleeping beast curled around a boulder. Half snake and half woman, it's hard to tell where the wrinkled skin becomes scales. Jet clears his throat, and the beast comes awake, fixing it's judgmental stare upon The Wild Card. Jet facepalms when he sees the beast has the face of Old Lady Levine.
"Uh, yeah, so," Jet begins. "I'm supposed to be going to fight this Betrayer guy. So I can get out of here. Which road is it?"
The beast Levine stretches, shaking it's great disgusting folds and uncurling it's serpentine tail. The tail quickly whips around Jet, who immediately begins to struggle against it's hold. The beast lifts him to it's eyes, considers him a moment, then chuckles.
"You will face all the roads, because it amuses me."
With that, the beast hurls Jet away, and he tucks into a roll trying to use the momentum of the toss and not break his neck. He comes to a stop, a little road rash his only damage.
"All the roads," he huffs. "Great. Couldn't just lead me to the guy I came to see." With that, he starts down the first road, but suddenly stops.
"If I'm to face all the roads, then this isn't the way. It's just a distraction," he reasons. He glances down the path and sees an incredibly sexy form garbed in Egyptian dress; it might actually be Lilith, beckoning to him. "A major distraction."
But, he shakes his head, having made up his mind. He isn't going to play according to the rules this time. He walks away from the first path, just like that bucking the system, and doesn't glance over his shoulder when Salem's ex lover is swept away on a great wind. He chooses a path at random and sets off.
It would seem, of course, to him, that he had chosen a path at random, but when you are dealing in matters metaphysical, fate has a way of steering you into the path it has chosen for you. Lust was not a concern for Jet, not a demon he had to battle. Skipping that leg of his journey was still part of the design. But the next step, he had to face, and he isn't even all the way down the path when a dark rain begins to fall. Greasy water runs off his arms, feeling and smelling all the world like day old dishwater. Jet rubs at his arms, trying in vain to sipe the stink and grime off. His gaze is ripped up, however, by a viscious snarling, a guttural indulgence in a meal to come.
Jet can't tear his eyes from the beast as it watches him, marks his steps, and internally calculates a strike. It's great paws tear at the ground beneath it's three heads, creating a slush in the churning landscape. Jet finally glances down to see his on again off again partner's carcass lying in the muck, the claws of the great beast pureeing his torso. Regardless of the eternal torment, KvK turns his head around like Linda Blair and stares Jet right in the face.
"For so long you tried to force me down the path you chose for the world," he reminds him. "But not I. Whoever you may influence, I, Klaus von Knorre, will never give in, will never give up the decadence of my lifestyle. Drink, lavish living, material extravagance, I'm a glutton for it all. Anything, any group, that challenges this is immediately abandoned, and more accepting social standards are seeked out, so that I may pass my life how I see fit, covered in all that makes me happy."
Jet is disgusted at KvK's crass acceptance of his face. So mired is he in the consumption of life itself that he can't see himself being ripped apart by the beast. Jet backpedals, wanting nothing to do with this path.
He returns to the crossroads, and chooses another, seemingly at random, certainly not either of the juxtaposed paths to the one he has just abandoned. But again, fate sees fit to send him right along the chosen way. He is almost amused to see his travelmates on this path. He doesn't recognize them at first, but as they trudge down the path he has chosen, they are fruitlessly struggling to push an entire wrestling ring filled with various implements common to the gutter aspect of this business. As he draws closer, he realizes it's Komosube and Dredd, the two interlopers who granted him an uneasy win early in his wrestling career. Ahead of the ring, trailing down the path ahead of them is the spotlight they were so greedy for that they were willing to go to any length to reach it. Oddly enough, the spotlight issues forth from a horn of plenty, carried by none other than a giant wolflike creature, who chuckles at the plight of it's deluded victims. Jet smirks, leaves the two men to their fate, and returns to the crossroads.
Another choice, another roll of the dice, another card drawn from this allegorical deck, and Jet is surprised that before too many steps, his looks down to see himself knee deep in a river of blood. In a panic, he almost darts for the shore, but the sounds of gnashing teeth and angry snarls draws his attention. He turns slowly to see a wild orgy of violence. Many figures brawl and tear each other apart all around him, but the one who stands out the most is a giant of a man in a business suit, Dirge himself. Dirge is a beast, an abomination to himself if such a thing can be imagined. His beautiful suit has begun to fall to shreds at the ends of the arms and legs, and the blood stains from both the river and his victims. He tears into the attackers with a rage unbridled, he is a vision terrifying to see. At moments, he drags the fallen limbs of his prey and beats oncomers with them. In all his bloody fury, however, he fails to see that he is trapped in the current, and with each whirling, devastating attack, he is swept farther and farther down the river. Fearing a similar fate, and seeing the attackers who have finally noticed him, Jet makes for the shore posthaste, struggling to reach land before he can be dragged below the water.
When he finally breaks free, Jet has to breathe for a moment, gasping, his head down, as he shakes the blood from himself. He finally looks up, and at the river's visible terminus, the other roads end at a great city, the outside of which is on fire. At the gate stands a giant minotaur, but his face is human, if marred by piercings, the bald head reflecting the fires of Dis. If he weren't so obviously a minotaur, Jet would swear it's a Dragon. Seeing the object of his hate, the tormentor of his family, Jet snarls like an animal himself, and rushes to his feet, sprinting for the gates of the city. No regard for the size and power of the beast, no caution against it's obvious power. The Wild Card leaps for the great Minotaur just as it dissolves, and Jet lands in a heap, confused but not stopped. He gets up, dusts himself off, and marches purposely into the city.
The Malebolge collapses into the great pit, a many-tiered amphitheatre, where an incredible amount of terrible activity. Jet his helpless against the urge to cover his ears as the wails of the scabbed and bleeding sinners fill the arena. Jet tries to hurry as he picks his way down the steps of the amphiteatre, and he is surprised suddenly to see Travis Roberts and Donovan Hastings, wearing coats of lead, struggling to crawl away from their captors, who whip them relentlessly. Apparantly their immortality isn't as blessed as Hanson would believe. Jet shrugs off the 'charmed' tag team as they reach out to him with wretched and sore fingers.
In the center of the pit is a staircase, but as Jet steps onto it, his blood freezes in his veins. The cold whipping out of the hole is so chilling, the senses are practically knocked out of Jet's body. No Siberia, no Tibet, no Himalaya, could measure up to this cold. Antarctic winds would be a welcome relief, as this Ice Age of Ice Ages begins eating into Jet's very soul. He comes down behind the throne of the great Prince of Darkness, the Great Betrayer.
The great horned beast was not there. Lucifer in all his many forms did not appear. No forked tail, no bearded goat. Jet is almost incredulous; he would be if he could feel a thing in this reach of the Boomerang Nebula.
No, the great enemy sitting on the throne was obviously battling the cold with hard Jameson Whiskey. Instead of a goat's head, of all things, a Kabuki mask adorns his face. His apathetic dismissal of Jet's presence is as cold as the environment. But the heat with which Jet unleashes the next word is ridden on a gust of steam so angry as to be red instead of white.
"You!"
One visage of the man, the chickenhawk who betrayed half his friends so that the other half wouldn't see him as an interferer, tosses his head in boredom, but the other, a split, almost double exposure of the persona, but twisted in some way which Jet cannot put his finger upon, turns a sharp and warning glare on Jet. Jet cannot understand this image divided, cannot fathom the warning within the vision, cannot decide his next course of action. Inside himself he feels some belonging, as if the split image were almost a mirror of the horror going on within Jet. The accusing glare of Dhar brings about memories of Jet's run in the auditions with Chika Ryuu Ja. Dhar knows the potential to seriously hurt that Thai kickboxer was within Jet, and Jet allowed that evil inside him to seep out long enough to fulfill his contractual obligations. Dhar, with a threatening look, reminds Jet that his entire run in GIW has been to fulfill his 'contractual obligations,' obligations which he accepted if it meant protecting Jezebel. Dhar coldheartedly points out, without saying a word, that the upcoming event includes a falls count anywhere stipulation, and that it may well prove to be the most violent match Jet has been involved in to date.
Will Jet be able to drag out that level of violence from within his heart of gold? Is it really a heart of gold, or is it simply electroplated, worth little to anywhere but a pawn shop? And is Jet truly a pawn himself, or is he really beating out the destiny he believes will lead him and his sister to salvation, up out of hell?
Far from the violent brawl Jet was expecting, this confrontation with the Great Betrayer has been more a confrontation of wills. A confrontation of himself, a look inside, to perhaps the very turmoil he needs to embrace to find the will and strength to face down the sinful masses that stand against him, protecting and hiding the whereabouts of Mickey Dragon.
Isn't it so ironic that Jet has had to become all that he hates in order to defeat all that he hates? In order to pay back the man who dragged Jezebel into this hell, Jet will have to stand face to face with the Devil himself, and prove that he can be much much worse.
He didn't realize when it had happened, but Jet was now lying facedown on the cold frozen earth below him. He raises his head, as if from a deep sleep, and the image of Dhar/Raenius is vanished. Mount Purgatorio can be seen, somewhere off on the Horizons.
---------
Jezebel shakes Jet awake as he shivers in his bed. He has twisted up the blankets in his sleep, and they lay scattered around the bed. Escaping from the basso loco still has him stunned as he stares at her in confusion.
"Jet, you left the window open," she points to the wind-buffeted portal. "It's freezing in here!"
Internal reel:
Jet is stepping through a noisy wood. The night is black, moonless, yet the trees and undergrowth are lit as if from within, an ethereal light that gives the entire sylvan setting a surreal glow. The noises are a rolling thunder of frantic and hungry animal calls, and the panic within Jet builds. He feels the fight or flight instinct beginning to take over, but his senses are overloading with his confusion of where to fly or what to fight. He balls his fists, curls them against his temples, and lets out a guttural snarl. When he finishes the snarl and opens his eyes, the sounds have stopped, but now a figure stands before hiim.
Standing well over seven feet tall, the phantom is dressed head to toe with a dusty black cape. Jet goes into a defensive crouch as the oversized figure glides toward him amongst stereotypical fog. Just as the figure gets within pouncing range, it swings a great nine foot scythe out of midair, the blade digging into the very fabric of reality and tearing it asunder. The folds of the universe flap in an unnaturally strong wind and Jet slides from his feet and into the chasm, and it's right here that you'd expect the metal lick to kick in as Jet slow falls through the planes.
Jet falls through a great cavern, headed directly for a gondola in the middle of a huge underground river. He lands, of course, headfirst in the boat, which looks to have been constructed entirely of human skeletons, clutching each other for support in some sort of silent agony. In the prow of the boat stands none other than Salem. He turns to Jet, drawing his punt out of the water.
"You have been chosen to face the horrors of the Inferno, Jet. Somewhere on the other side of Tartarus, you must find the great Betrayer and defeat him. Only then will your soul be purified and released from this torment."
Jet raises an eyebrow, "You want me to fight Satan?"
"Do you have your payment? All must pay the ferryman to cross into the Underworld."
Jet pats his pockets, coming up empty. He shrugs, but Salem produces a scroll and unfurls it. It's a GIW wrestling contract, and Salem deftly pricks Jet's arm with a quill before indicating the line where Jet must sign. Jet looks completely confused as he scribbles his signature on the scroll, and the gondola comes to rest on the shore.
Jet steps ashore, and looks around himself. The desolate darkness is featureless, only the cold stone ground rolling out into the shadow. As Jet takes a step forward, Salem calls out as he pushes the punt against the shore, "Abandon all hope!"
Jet rolls his eyes and continues into the darkness. It isn't long before he encounters a bevy of gauzy wraiths, floating about as if lost, looks of pained confusion twisting their faces. He almost comes to a full stop when he notices a shade of Moss Edwards float past, his haunted eyes made unnerving by resembling twin damaged filmstrips, playing some black and white silent classic at varying speeds. A few seconds later, JK floats by, his gaze staring longingly down the dark path that Jet is following, with darting glances back toward the river. Jet doesn't stick around to see if JK decides to descend deeper into the blackness.
The smell is like every bad stereotype of an old person all rolled into one, condensed, and effervesced every three second in the worlds greatest vaporizer. Moth balls. Hard candy. Urine. Pipe tobacco. Denture Cream. Bengay. As Somers approaches an intersection of many roads, he notices a great sleeping beast curled around a boulder. Half snake and half woman, it's hard to tell where the wrinkled skin becomes scales. Jet clears his throat, and the beast comes awake, fixing it's judgmental stare upon The Wild Card. Jet facepalms when he sees the beast has the face of Old Lady Levine.
"Uh, yeah, so," Jet begins. "I'm supposed to be going to fight this Betrayer guy. So I can get out of here. Which road is it?"
The beast Levine stretches, shaking it's great disgusting folds and uncurling it's serpentine tail. The tail quickly whips around Jet, who immediately begins to struggle against it's hold. The beast lifts him to it's eyes, considers him a moment, then chuckles.
"You will face all the roads, because it amuses me."
With that, the beast hurls Jet away, and he tucks into a roll trying to use the momentum of the toss and not break his neck. He comes to a stop, a little road rash his only damage.
"All the roads," he huffs. "Great. Couldn't just lead me to the guy I came to see." With that, he starts down the first road, but suddenly stops.
"If I'm to face all the roads, then this isn't the way. It's just a distraction," he reasons. He glances down the path and sees an incredibly sexy form garbed in Egyptian dress; it might actually be Lilith, beckoning to him. "A major distraction."
But, he shakes his head, having made up his mind. He isn't going to play according to the rules this time. He walks away from the first path, just like that bucking the system, and doesn't glance over his shoulder when Salem's ex lover is swept away on a great wind. He chooses a path at random and sets off.
It would seem, of course, to him, that he had chosen a path at random, but when you are dealing in matters metaphysical, fate has a way of steering you into the path it has chosen for you. Lust was not a concern for Jet, not a demon he had to battle. Skipping that leg of his journey was still part of the design. But the next step, he had to face, and he isn't even all the way down the path when a dark rain begins to fall. Greasy water runs off his arms, feeling and smelling all the world like day old dishwater. Jet rubs at his arms, trying in vain to sipe the stink and grime off. His gaze is ripped up, however, by a viscious snarling, a guttural indulgence in a meal to come.
Jet can't tear his eyes from the beast as it watches him, marks his steps, and internally calculates a strike. It's great paws tear at the ground beneath it's three heads, creating a slush in the churning landscape. Jet finally glances down to see his on again off again partner's carcass lying in the muck, the claws of the great beast pureeing his torso. Regardless of the eternal torment, KvK turns his head around like Linda Blair and stares Jet right in the face.
"For so long you tried to force me down the path you chose for the world," he reminds him. "But not I. Whoever you may influence, I, Klaus von Knorre, will never give in, will never give up the decadence of my lifestyle. Drink, lavish living, material extravagance, I'm a glutton for it all. Anything, any group, that challenges this is immediately abandoned, and more accepting social standards are seeked out, so that I may pass my life how I see fit, covered in all that makes me happy."
Jet is disgusted at KvK's crass acceptance of his face. So mired is he in the consumption of life itself that he can't see himself being ripped apart by the beast. Jet backpedals, wanting nothing to do with this path.
He returns to the crossroads, and chooses another, seemingly at random, certainly not either of the juxtaposed paths to the one he has just abandoned. But again, fate sees fit to send him right along the chosen way. He is almost amused to see his travelmates on this path. He doesn't recognize them at first, but as they trudge down the path he has chosen, they are fruitlessly struggling to push an entire wrestling ring filled with various implements common to the gutter aspect of this business. As he draws closer, he realizes it's Komosube and Dredd, the two interlopers who granted him an uneasy win early in his wrestling career. Ahead of the ring, trailing down the path ahead of them is the spotlight they were so greedy for that they were willing to go to any length to reach it. Oddly enough, the spotlight issues forth from a horn of plenty, carried by none other than a giant wolflike creature, who chuckles at the plight of it's deluded victims. Jet smirks, leaves the two men to their fate, and returns to the crossroads.
Another choice, another roll of the dice, another card drawn from this allegorical deck, and Jet is surprised that before too many steps, his looks down to see himself knee deep in a river of blood. In a panic, he almost darts for the shore, but the sounds of gnashing teeth and angry snarls draws his attention. He turns slowly to see a wild orgy of violence. Many figures brawl and tear each other apart all around him, but the one who stands out the most is a giant of a man in a business suit, Dirge himself. Dirge is a beast, an abomination to himself if such a thing can be imagined. His beautiful suit has begun to fall to shreds at the ends of the arms and legs, and the blood stains from both the river and his victims. He tears into the attackers with a rage unbridled, he is a vision terrifying to see. At moments, he drags the fallen limbs of his prey and beats oncomers with them. In all his bloody fury, however, he fails to see that he is trapped in the current, and with each whirling, devastating attack, he is swept farther and farther down the river. Fearing a similar fate, and seeing the attackers who have finally noticed him, Jet makes for the shore posthaste, struggling to reach land before he can be dragged below the water.
When he finally breaks free, Jet has to breathe for a moment, gasping, his head down, as he shakes the blood from himself. He finally looks up, and at the river's visible terminus, the other roads end at a great city, the outside of which is on fire. At the gate stands a giant minotaur, but his face is human, if marred by piercings, the bald head reflecting the fires of Dis. If he weren't so obviously a minotaur, Jet would swear it's a Dragon. Seeing the object of his hate, the tormentor of his family, Jet snarls like an animal himself, and rushes to his feet, sprinting for the gates of the city. No regard for the size and power of the beast, no caution against it's obvious power. The Wild Card leaps for the great Minotaur just as it dissolves, and Jet lands in a heap, confused but not stopped. He gets up, dusts himself off, and marches purposely into the city.
The Malebolge collapses into the great pit, a many-tiered amphitheatre, where an incredible amount of terrible activity. Jet his helpless against the urge to cover his ears as the wails of the scabbed and bleeding sinners fill the arena. Jet tries to hurry as he picks his way down the steps of the amphiteatre, and he is surprised suddenly to see Travis Roberts and Donovan Hastings, wearing coats of lead, struggling to crawl away from their captors, who whip them relentlessly. Apparantly their immortality isn't as blessed as Hanson would believe. Jet shrugs off the 'charmed' tag team as they reach out to him with wretched and sore fingers.
In the center of the pit is a staircase, but as Jet steps onto it, his blood freezes in his veins. The cold whipping out of the hole is so chilling, the senses are practically knocked out of Jet's body. No Siberia, no Tibet, no Himalaya, could measure up to this cold. Antarctic winds would be a welcome relief, as this Ice Age of Ice Ages begins eating into Jet's very soul. He comes down behind the throne of the great Prince of Darkness, the Great Betrayer.
The great horned beast was not there. Lucifer in all his many forms did not appear. No forked tail, no bearded goat. Jet is almost incredulous; he would be if he could feel a thing in this reach of the Boomerang Nebula.
No, the great enemy sitting on the throne was obviously battling the cold with hard Jameson Whiskey. Instead of a goat's head, of all things, a Kabuki mask adorns his face. His apathetic dismissal of Jet's presence is as cold as the environment. But the heat with which Jet unleashes the next word is ridden on a gust of steam so angry as to be red instead of white.
"You!"
One visage of the man, the chickenhawk who betrayed half his friends so that the other half wouldn't see him as an interferer, tosses his head in boredom, but the other, a split, almost double exposure of the persona, but twisted in some way which Jet cannot put his finger upon, turns a sharp and warning glare on Jet. Jet cannot understand this image divided, cannot fathom the warning within the vision, cannot decide his next course of action. Inside himself he feels some belonging, as if the split image were almost a mirror of the horror going on within Jet. The accusing glare of Dhar brings about memories of Jet's run in the auditions with Chika Ryuu Ja. Dhar knows the potential to seriously hurt that Thai kickboxer was within Jet, and Jet allowed that evil inside him to seep out long enough to fulfill his contractual obligations. Dhar, with a threatening look, reminds Jet that his entire run in GIW has been to fulfill his 'contractual obligations,' obligations which he accepted if it meant protecting Jezebel. Dhar coldheartedly points out, without saying a word, that the upcoming event includes a falls count anywhere stipulation, and that it may well prove to be the most violent match Jet has been involved in to date.
Will Jet be able to drag out that level of violence from within his heart of gold? Is it really a heart of gold, or is it simply electroplated, worth little to anywhere but a pawn shop? And is Jet truly a pawn himself, or is he really beating out the destiny he believes will lead him and his sister to salvation, up out of hell?
Far from the violent brawl Jet was expecting, this confrontation with the Great Betrayer has been more a confrontation of wills. A confrontation of himself, a look inside, to perhaps the very turmoil he needs to embrace to find the will and strength to face down the sinful masses that stand against him, protecting and hiding the whereabouts of Mickey Dragon.
Isn't it so ironic that Jet has had to become all that he hates in order to defeat all that he hates? In order to pay back the man who dragged Jezebel into this hell, Jet will have to stand face to face with the Devil himself, and prove that he can be much much worse.
He didn't realize when it had happened, but Jet was now lying facedown on the cold frozen earth below him. He raises his head, as if from a deep sleep, and the image of Dhar/Raenius is vanished. Mount Purgatorio can be seen, somewhere off on the Horizons.
---------
Jezebel shakes Jet awake as he shivers in his bed. He has twisted up the blankets in his sleep, and they lay scattered around the bed. Escaping from the basso loco still has him stunned as he stares at her in confusion.
"Jet, you left the window open," she points to the wind-buffeted portal. "It's freezing in here!"
x2