Post by Lord Hastings on Dec 7, 2018 20:01:33 GMT -5
The old Zane Scott. As dead as dead can be, or so you’d tell me. Problem is, I just don’t believe it, after all I am ever the optimistic one. What I’m sure of, Zane, is your ability to become my perfect enemy.
I never forgot what you did. I was about to become a father. You were the fan’s pick to face me for the night, something of an afterthought. What you did that night was ruthless. It was the night you truly earned your moniker. The Personification of Hate. There was no other description for it, simple blind hate for the sake of being hateful.
It’s something you became known for, something you seemed almost proud of yourself for. Mindless violence, blind hatred. I’m sure you saw it as something sophisticated. You thought yourself something special. A sociopath that sees sophistication in the mirror is still a sociopath.
I never forgave you for what you did, Zane. I couldn’t. Now I’m all my children have, and you nearly took me from them before our time together had even begun. You never paid the price for that. The scale was never balanced.
Wind the clock ahead several years, and our fates cross once more. I find you anchored to my leg at Outlast, and after an odd moment of familiarity, after years of patiently waiting, I finally saw an opening of weakness. I saw opportunity in your unexpected gullibility.
You just made it so easy, didn’t you? That was the sad part. You were so desperate for a friend, so empty inside, you just wanted it all to be true. So I built you up, because that part was necessary, bided my time so that when the time was right, I could tear you down. I fed you washed up contenders to make sure you stayed afloat while I needed you to. I still can’t believe the nonsense you let me get away with. I made you team with a cardboard cutout. You fought in three-on-one handicap matches. It was pathetic. I made you a triple champion, and then I made sure each of those championships were stripped away from you.
The most brutal part is that through it all, you still looked at our friendship with those puppy-dog eyes. I started to feel sorry for you, shocked me a bit. You invited me to bring my children to your house. It wasn’t long ago that you drugged a woman and sat her at your table, pretending she was Lucy Wylde, and you want me to bring my children to your house, you sociopathic psychopath. Or is it psychopathic sociopath? I’m sure you check all the boxes.
And then, and this might be my favorite part, and then, after I saw to it that you were thoroughly and repeatedly embarrassed, you hung around for more, like the little lost orphan boy. Please Donovan, can you just shit on me some more? I mean, who am I to refuse such an obvious request?
The look on your face at Outlast was priceless. Let’s be fair here, Zane. I warned you. I warned you repeatedly. I more or less spelled it out completely for you. Maybe I should have just drawn you a map. Gotten a poster, a nice crayon. A midnight blue or a denim, cerulean maybe. My crayola game rolls pretty deep. You know they make a purple heart colored crayon? That might have been appropriate. Anyway, drawn you a big arrow, BETRAYAL COMING THIS WAY. Inevitable. It was inevitable. After everything you did to me, after suffering consequences for none of it, tell me, Zane, was there any other way this could have gone?
Inevitable.
The man once known as the Momentum Killer sits alone in a small coffee shop in Chicago. He takes a sip of his drink and gazes out the window. The bell rings as the door opens and closes, and Donovan enters the shop, inconspicuously dressed with a hoodie pulled up over his head. He stands at the table across from Dirge, who slowly turns his head to look up at him.
Dirge: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.
Hastings: You did the same for me when I asked a year ago.
Dirge: I did. Please.
Dirge gestures to the chair opposite him. Donovan takes a seat.
Dirge: I took the liberty of not ordering you a drink. You don’t partake, as I recall.
Hastings: Coffee is the nectar of the weak.
Dirge: So you’ve said.
Dirge sips his drink.
Dirge: I’ve been watching, you know. This business with you and Zane has gotten quite ugly. Given as well as I know the both of you, I’m somewhat surprised this last week was so quiet.
Hastings: I had the cameras switched off near my office. He tried to break in, managed to lay out my burly men. You remember them, of course.
Dirge: Of course.
Hastings: He confronted me, thought he had me trapped. He laughed when I had my finger on the button for the trap door. “That never works,” he said. Jokes on him.
Dirge: You mean to tell me you dropped Zane in the pirana pit?
Hastings: No, the button opened my escape hatch and I slipped out. He stole his stupid chair back from over my desk, though. Left my office a bit threadbare.
Dirge: I see. And all this really happened?
Hastings: Sure.
Dirge smirks and sips his drink.
Dirge: I have to ask why, why do this at all? You’ve been down this path with Zane before. It never ended well for you.
Hastings: There’s something to be said for conquering the mountain that people told you can’t be conquered.
Dirge: Once upon a time, you were that person for me. The end of GIW, the early days of UGWC, you handed me loss after loss. I didn’t join with you in the Puppet Masters for some long form of revenge. As I recall, I was the last member of that group to stand by you.
Hastings: So we should just agree that revenge is simply another thing I’m better than you at.
Dirge: You’re playing a dangerous game.
Hastings: This is always a dangerous game.
Dirge: It is, and I thought that was why you were getting out of it. A year ago you felt you could be complete without all this, that you could move forward in life without feeling as though you left something unfinished.
Hastings: It turns out there was something left unfinished. Are you going to try to tell me that I’m wrong?
Dirge: I would never presume to tell you what to do with your career or your life. Do as you will, but just make sure you do one thing before it’s over, for your sake.
Hastings: And what is that?
Dirge stands to leave.
Dirge: Make sure this time it’s finished.
So how did you respond to justice being served at Outlast? By shrinking into yourself and making yourself a masochistic paperweight. I took no joy in watching you subject yourself to beating after beating in the weeks that followed. It was something of a let down, to be perfectly honest. I wanted you to wake up, Zane. Wake up, and face me. This playing dead act that you ran with for weeks, it was rather pathetic, not to mention disappointing. I don’t know, Zane. Maybe you’re better off this way.
Leaning over you at Battleground, you were so cold and catatonic. In my mind I caught a brief reflection of what you could and might have been. It’s your right and your ability to become my perfect enemy.
I had to get involved myself at Battleground. You needed the push. You needed it so that you could show everyone that I wasn’t wrong. I did what was needed, Zane, because there is red in your ledger and you still need to pay it. You’ve tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes this past year, but not mine. Not me. I know who you are. The world is going to see Zane Scott, and the truth will be exposed. No more of this passive-aggressive bullshit. At Horizons it is just you and me, and the truth will set us both free.
Hastings: You couldn’t bother Vines or Ooley with this?
Donovan has his arms folded and a scowl on his face as he stands in the office of the Head Trainer.
JK: Her injuries-
Hastings: Are not my problem. Here’s the bottom line, Jordan. My term as Creative Director is over in a month. The fate of Eden Morgan has no bearing on me, if she wants to fight on her terms, she wants to go down swinging, I have no inclination to stop her.
JK: And what about yours?
Hastings: My what?
JK: It’s my job to review the medical records and clear everyone to compete. For the first time since I took this job, mate, that now includes you.
Hastings: I’ve been cleared for years. My retirement had nothing to do with injury.
JK: But it almost did. Not a year ago. Five years ago.
Hastings: What about it?
JK: In Your Hands 2013. Zane had you beat, and kept picking you off the mat and delivering Dehumanization after Dehumanization. He nearly destroyed your knee with a chair, and shoved you off the stage in a stretcher.
Hastings: I was there, I don’t need to be told about it.
JK: But I’m looking at the medical reports from the time, it’s a miracle you made it back at all!
Hastings: But I did make it back.
JK: Yes, you returned four months later and faced him at Battleground, and you’re lucky he didn’t finish you off then. He delivered two of the worst losses you’ve ever taken in your career that year.
Hastings: Three, actually. He beat me at Infinity to win the Global Challenge. What’s your point?
JK: You and I might not have the best history together, but it’s my job to care about and look out for the well-being of the people that compete in our ring.
Hastings: And you think I’m at risk at Horizons?
JK: I know what he’s done to you before.
Hastings: No, you just know who Zane Scott is. I’m proud of you for that. He seems to have everybody else fooled. Not for much longer. You do your job at Horizons. I’ll do mine.
Wake up, Zane, and face me. Don’t play dead, because maybe someday I will walk away and say you disappoint me. You wouldn’t want that, Zane. You wouldn’t want somebody to be disappointed in you, for somebody to think you might be weak.
That’s the truth, Zane. The truth that sooner or later you’ll have to admit to yourself. I am your weakness, your perfect enemy. Just as you are mine.
Go ahead and play dead. I know that you can hear this. Turn and face me.
You fucking disappoint me. You and your passive-aggressive bullshit.
This was inevitable.
I never forgot what you did. I was about to become a father. You were the fan’s pick to face me for the night, something of an afterthought. What you did that night was ruthless. It was the night you truly earned your moniker. The Personification of Hate. There was no other description for it, simple blind hate for the sake of being hateful.
It’s something you became known for, something you seemed almost proud of yourself for. Mindless violence, blind hatred. I’m sure you saw it as something sophisticated. You thought yourself something special. A sociopath that sees sophistication in the mirror is still a sociopath.
I never forgave you for what you did, Zane. I couldn’t. Now I’m all my children have, and you nearly took me from them before our time together had even begun. You never paid the price for that. The scale was never balanced.
Wind the clock ahead several years, and our fates cross once more. I find you anchored to my leg at Outlast, and after an odd moment of familiarity, after years of patiently waiting, I finally saw an opening of weakness. I saw opportunity in your unexpected gullibility.
You just made it so easy, didn’t you? That was the sad part. You were so desperate for a friend, so empty inside, you just wanted it all to be true. So I built you up, because that part was necessary, bided my time so that when the time was right, I could tear you down. I fed you washed up contenders to make sure you stayed afloat while I needed you to. I still can’t believe the nonsense you let me get away with. I made you team with a cardboard cutout. You fought in three-on-one handicap matches. It was pathetic. I made you a triple champion, and then I made sure each of those championships were stripped away from you.
The most brutal part is that through it all, you still looked at our friendship with those puppy-dog eyes. I started to feel sorry for you, shocked me a bit. You invited me to bring my children to your house. It wasn’t long ago that you drugged a woman and sat her at your table, pretending she was Lucy Wylde, and you want me to bring my children to your house, you sociopathic psychopath. Or is it psychopathic sociopath? I’m sure you check all the boxes.
And then, and this might be my favorite part, and then, after I saw to it that you were thoroughly and repeatedly embarrassed, you hung around for more, like the little lost orphan boy. Please Donovan, can you just shit on me some more? I mean, who am I to refuse such an obvious request?
The look on your face at Outlast was priceless. Let’s be fair here, Zane. I warned you. I warned you repeatedly. I more or less spelled it out completely for you. Maybe I should have just drawn you a map. Gotten a poster, a nice crayon. A midnight blue or a denim, cerulean maybe. My crayola game rolls pretty deep. You know they make a purple heart colored crayon? That might have been appropriate. Anyway, drawn you a big arrow, BETRAYAL COMING THIS WAY. Inevitable. It was inevitable. After everything you did to me, after suffering consequences for none of it, tell me, Zane, was there any other way this could have gone?
Inevitable.
~
The man once known as the Momentum Killer sits alone in a small coffee shop in Chicago. He takes a sip of his drink and gazes out the window. The bell rings as the door opens and closes, and Donovan enters the shop, inconspicuously dressed with a hoodie pulled up over his head. He stands at the table across from Dirge, who slowly turns his head to look up at him.
Dirge: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.
Hastings: You did the same for me when I asked a year ago.
Dirge: I did. Please.
Dirge gestures to the chair opposite him. Donovan takes a seat.
Dirge: I took the liberty of not ordering you a drink. You don’t partake, as I recall.
Hastings: Coffee is the nectar of the weak.
Dirge: So you’ve said.
Dirge sips his drink.
Dirge: I’ve been watching, you know. This business with you and Zane has gotten quite ugly. Given as well as I know the both of you, I’m somewhat surprised this last week was so quiet.
Hastings: I had the cameras switched off near my office. He tried to break in, managed to lay out my burly men. You remember them, of course.
Dirge: Of course.
Hastings: He confronted me, thought he had me trapped. He laughed when I had my finger on the button for the trap door. “That never works,” he said. Jokes on him.
Dirge: You mean to tell me you dropped Zane in the pirana pit?
Hastings: No, the button opened my escape hatch and I slipped out. He stole his stupid chair back from over my desk, though. Left my office a bit threadbare.
Dirge: I see. And all this really happened?
Hastings: Sure.
Dirge smirks and sips his drink.
Dirge: I have to ask why, why do this at all? You’ve been down this path with Zane before. It never ended well for you.
Hastings: There’s something to be said for conquering the mountain that people told you can’t be conquered.
Dirge: Once upon a time, you were that person for me. The end of GIW, the early days of UGWC, you handed me loss after loss. I didn’t join with you in the Puppet Masters for some long form of revenge. As I recall, I was the last member of that group to stand by you.
Hastings: So we should just agree that revenge is simply another thing I’m better than you at.
Dirge: You’re playing a dangerous game.
Hastings: This is always a dangerous game.
Dirge: It is, and I thought that was why you were getting out of it. A year ago you felt you could be complete without all this, that you could move forward in life without feeling as though you left something unfinished.
Hastings: It turns out there was something left unfinished. Are you going to try to tell me that I’m wrong?
Dirge: I would never presume to tell you what to do with your career or your life. Do as you will, but just make sure you do one thing before it’s over, for your sake.
Hastings: And what is that?
Dirge stands to leave.
Dirge: Make sure this time it’s finished.
~
So how did you respond to justice being served at Outlast? By shrinking into yourself and making yourself a masochistic paperweight. I took no joy in watching you subject yourself to beating after beating in the weeks that followed. It was something of a let down, to be perfectly honest. I wanted you to wake up, Zane. Wake up, and face me. This playing dead act that you ran with for weeks, it was rather pathetic, not to mention disappointing. I don’t know, Zane. Maybe you’re better off this way.
Leaning over you at Battleground, you were so cold and catatonic. In my mind I caught a brief reflection of what you could and might have been. It’s your right and your ability to become my perfect enemy.
I had to get involved myself at Battleground. You needed the push. You needed it so that you could show everyone that I wasn’t wrong. I did what was needed, Zane, because there is red in your ledger and you still need to pay it. You’ve tried to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes this past year, but not mine. Not me. I know who you are. The world is going to see Zane Scott, and the truth will be exposed. No more of this passive-aggressive bullshit. At Horizons it is just you and me, and the truth will set us both free.
~
Hastings: You couldn’t bother Vines or Ooley with this?
Donovan has his arms folded and a scowl on his face as he stands in the office of the Head Trainer.
JK: Her injuries-
Hastings: Are not my problem. Here’s the bottom line, Jordan. My term as Creative Director is over in a month. The fate of Eden Morgan has no bearing on me, if she wants to fight on her terms, she wants to go down swinging, I have no inclination to stop her.
JK: And what about yours?
Hastings: My what?
JK: It’s my job to review the medical records and clear everyone to compete. For the first time since I took this job, mate, that now includes you.
Hastings: I’ve been cleared for years. My retirement had nothing to do with injury.
JK: But it almost did. Not a year ago. Five years ago.
Hastings: What about it?
JK: In Your Hands 2013. Zane had you beat, and kept picking you off the mat and delivering Dehumanization after Dehumanization. He nearly destroyed your knee with a chair, and shoved you off the stage in a stretcher.
Hastings: I was there, I don’t need to be told about it.
JK: But I’m looking at the medical reports from the time, it’s a miracle you made it back at all!
Hastings: But I did make it back.
JK: Yes, you returned four months later and faced him at Battleground, and you’re lucky he didn’t finish you off then. He delivered two of the worst losses you’ve ever taken in your career that year.
Hastings: Three, actually. He beat me at Infinity to win the Global Challenge. What’s your point?
JK: You and I might not have the best history together, but it’s my job to care about and look out for the well-being of the people that compete in our ring.
Hastings: And you think I’m at risk at Horizons?
JK: I know what he’s done to you before.
Hastings: No, you just know who Zane Scott is. I’m proud of you for that. He seems to have everybody else fooled. Not for much longer. You do your job at Horizons. I’ll do mine.
~
Wake up, Zane, and face me. Don’t play dead, because maybe someday I will walk away and say you disappoint me. You wouldn’t want that, Zane. You wouldn’t want somebody to be disappointed in you, for somebody to think you might be weak.
That’s the truth, Zane. The truth that sooner or later you’ll have to admit to yourself. I am your weakness, your perfect enemy. Just as you are mine.
Go ahead and play dead. I know that you can hear this. Turn and face me.
You fucking disappoint me. You and your passive-aggressive bullshit.
This was inevitable.