Post by Zachariah Blood on Jun 29, 2013 2:30:12 GMT -4
We open up to a scene backstage at the U.S. Airlines Center in Phoenix, barely an hour after the Meltdown main event. The building is quiet at the moment save for the ambient shuffling and voices of the techs, agents and producers who are herding the other wrestlers as well as the sets and gear. Already the mad rush has begun to move the show to the next venue, despite the fact that said show isn’t for two weeks. That cacophony hardly reaches the locker room of The Unforgiven, however. And even if it did, the white noise surrounding the foursome, who had taken their first-ever loss as a team to a lucky Brian Hollywood and a persistent Chris Madison, would have drowned it out.
The cameras quickly re-center on the stunning Lady Rayne as she relaxes on a plush sofa in The Unforgiven’s locker room. Leather-clad legs rest with one crossed over the other, blood-red fingertips clasped around the raised knee as she stares silently at something off-camera. It’s hard to tell if she’s calm, frustrated, furious or a combination of those moods in her silence. The easy answer was all three and several others. Snapped winning streaks, no matter how short, are often met with a dangerous cocktail of negative, degenerative emotional states. Steam and the sounds of running water emit from around the corner as background noise, falling further behind as a door opens off to the side.
Rayne averts her eyes in that direction as Talon and Sentinel walk into the frame. Rayne looks up at her sister and nods slightly, a gesture that Talon returns. Sentinel, having already showered and changed into black jeans and a sleeveless white top, brushes his lips across the cheek of Talon and, as he moves past Rayne, gently sets a heavy hand on her shoulder. He gives that spot a squeeze, a rare gesture of comfort for someone other than his lady. Rayne looks up at him with a trace smile before turning back to her sister as the big man moves out of frame.
Talon: ”He’s taking his sweet time.”
Talon nods toward the showers, prompting Rayne to look that way with a little smirk.
Lady Rayne: ”It takes time to wash the stench of sub-humans like Hollywood and Madison off one’s flesh, dear sister.”
It’s Talon’s turn to smirk, a more sultry and appealing expression on her face as opposed to the dangerous, predatory version that her younger sister wore.
Talon: ”You should not speak so cavalierly about them at this point. They do own a win over us after tonight.”
Lady Rayne: ”You had to remind me of that. I can already hear them crowing about it and we haven’t even gotten a message about the next show yet. They’re going to bray and bark like the animals that they are, claiming some kind of false superiority when all they did was sneak in the back door and steal a win. Decisive? Not hardly.”
Talon: ”But a win nonetheless. We knew this day would come eventually.”
Lady Rayne: ”Just as we know it means nothing. So why do you persist in dwelling on it?”
Agitation had taken over as the predominant emotion on the face and in the voice of Rayne, who had risen from the couch and begun to pace. Talon, perched on the arm of it on the other side, watched her sister patiently. Her flowing black skirt and red peasant blouse gave her a more mature air as opposed to the leather-and-lace of her younger sibling which bordered on rebellious. Rayne continued her irritated diatribe unabated.
Lady Rayne: ”Honestly, sister, this isn’t as big of a deal for you and Sentinel as it is for Zachariah and I. You’ve been around longer. You know how to deal with defeat…”
A barely-perceptible hardness comes to Talon’s expression but passes quietly and quickly.
Lady Rayne: ”…but for Zachariah? It’s disgusting, especially when it comes at the hands of someone who barely survived one move from Sentinel the last time we squared off! And beyond that…”
Talon: ”Enough.”
The firmness in the elder sister’s voice startled Rayne into silence. Talon didn’t yet, but the potency of her tone might have been even more effective. She rose to her full height, six feet and one inch plus what her heeled boots offered, and met her sister’s incredulous stare.
Talon: ”Zachariah has been out of the business for almost a year. Sentinel for even longer. We knew coming in that losses would happen and probably soon after the fact given our ring rust. While you stand and bitch about it, and yes, sister, you are bitching…”
All set to retort, Rayne was halted by the lifted hand of Talon.
Talon: ”…you are forgetting a few details. One is that we brought these two into APW with losses on their records. They started off on a low note thanks to us. Two, and perhaps more importantly where you’re concerned, is that Sentinel was the one who took the fall here, not your precious pet. And thirdly, we’re still in the main event. We’re still at the top of the card. So they got a win after a few tries and Madison found him some cronies to latch on to. They’re still at the middle of the card. We’re on the marquee. We’re putting asses in seats. I think what pisses you off most is that our benefactor was right about Madison and that after the match, Sentinel wouldn’t let Zachariah go after a little vengeance.”
Lady Rayne: ”Which he had every right to!”
Talon: ”Did he? Why?”
Rayne does a fish impression, mouth opening and closing a time or two, looking for the words to vocalize her thoughts but coming up short. She folds her arms across her chest and sniffs irritably. Talon merely smiles and walks to her sister, setting her hands on the tense younger woman’s shoulders. Rayne looks prepared to jerk away but…doesn’t.
Talon: ”I can already tell he’s going to be hard to deal with. You two might want to consider staying in rather than going out with us. Take in a little…quiet time.”
Talon smirked slightly and Rayne rolled her eyes even though she looked like she was considering it. The shower shuts off and Talon moves out of the frame as we fade to black briefly…
…before returning with a shot of Rayne leaving the arena with Zachariah Blood at her side, a bag over each of their shoulders. The Masochist, having thrown on a black Affliction-style shirt with red-and-gold accents and a pair of black cargos, looks ready to hurt the first thing that gets in his way. They exit the arena through the back doors and are set to walk to their rental when a black Cadillac Escalade pulls up in front of them, literally out of nowhere. Rayne takes a step back but Zachariah stands his ground, both looking to the rear passenger door as a mountain-sized man in a black suit steps out of the vehicle and opens said door.
Rayne’s eyes widen as a white cloaked figure, hooded so as to mask her identity, steps fluidly from the vehicle. Zachariah’s stare narrows and he snarls, causing the bald man in the black suit to take a step toward him. The woman in white holds up a gloved hand and the large man steps back though his eyes remain focused on the Masochist. The woman speaks in a beautifully-accented voice, traces of mixed Mediterranean accents wrapped in every syllable.
Woman in White: ”Get in.”
Rayne enters the vehicle without protest but Zachariah is resistant until she fixes a cold stare on him, going from tentative to intense within a second. Unwilling and unable to resist a direct order, even an unspoken one, a thoroughly-discombobulated Zachariah enters after her. The woman in white enters after them, allowing the large man to shut the door and re-enter as well before the car pulls away. Once more, we fade to black…
…and jump ahead over a week to the present moment. Zachariah is sitting on the edge of a building, presumably somewhere in Miami based on the skyline we can see. Lit up against the dwindling light of dusk, the buildings are monolithic towers of darkness, dotted with random smatterings of light. Conspicuous by her absence is Lady Rayne though as we’ve heard before, Zachariah is more than capable of speaking for himself. And he does so.
Zachariah Blood: ”Before I deal with the misshapen quartet that’s due for punishment here in a few nights, someone, once again, needs to be put to rights:”
His dark hair hangs loose, blowing in the altitude-aided wind. The red-and-black mesh top he has on barely masks his multiple tattoos and offers more comfort than anything ‘solid’ in the heat and humidity of a Florida summer. Zachariah looks over his shoulder at the camera with a snarl.
Zachariah Blood: ”You keep talking your shit, Madison. Go ahead. Yes, you finally got the duke over The Unforgiven thanks to Hollywood being effective for all of five seconds of that match. But remember that you didn’t pin me. You pinned my massive partner. One-on-one? I would eat you alive and leave your new running buddies to put what’s left in a plastic bag to FedEx to your emotional ex-girlfriend. Maybe then she’ll have the courage to do the deed properly instead of looking like a blood-stained attention whore. Play at being heartless where she’s concerned all you want, but the blame will be all yours when my next act of destruction on your worthless ass sends her to hell like the emotional coward that she is.”
The chill of the words and the meaning behind them seems to reach through television screens and monitors to grip those watching and listening. Zachariah snorts and turns back to the view, the Japanese incantation tattooed down his spine shifting with each breath.
Zachariah Blood: ”Now, on to something that matters.”
The sound of him spitting, perhaps landing eventually on the head of some pedestrian, emits before he continues.
Zachariah Blood: ”Another main event match involving the most dangerous team in APW today, The Unforgiven. Except this time around, we’ve got a few extra partners looking for a slice of action, those being Stefan Raab and Jerry Matthews to be precise. Where it comes to the former, I’ve spoken to his agent a few times as I made my way to Miami and we have an understanding. Stefan gets Keaton Saint all to himself and Brian Hollywood belongs to The Unforgiven. As for the bible-thumper, as long as he keeps his quotations and attempts to save souls to himself, there will be no issues. I already have to deal with too many of his ilk in my daily life and while they aren’t quite as…heretical…as Matthews, they’re more than enough. With that out of the way…”
Zachariah seems to be taking something out his pocket, revealed to be a smartphone of unknown make and model. He makes a few taps and sweeps, ignoring a text message and a few e-mails before he finally reaches his destination: the APW website. A few moments later he shoves the phone back into his pocket with a barking snort that, we suppose, is about as close to a laugh as we’ll get.
Zachariah Blood: ”Really? That’s it? Just the guy whose name sounds like a date rape drug? Exactly how many rocks did they have to dig under to find you, Ronnie? And is there an inordinate amount of bagged and labeled body parts in your freezer?”
We could assume that he was smiling with his back to us…but we know better.
Zachariah Blood: ”Take your mouth from around the jocks of your partners and listen up, sport. I’m gonna talk real slow with relatively small words so you get this the first time.”
He swings a leg around and places it on the roof surface, folded arms rested on his bent leg, the other still swinging over the edge high above Miami proper.
Zachariah Blood: ”You’re just another neophyte, Ronnie, playing at having a little webcast for all eleven of your YouTube followers to drool over and trying to act as if you belong in the same ring with The Unforgiven, Raab and Preacher Matthews. That’s not gutsy nor is it entertaining. It’s a malignant case of pants-on-head retardation. At what point in your one-match career here did you suddenly grow enough hair on your grapes to think you could mouth off even jokingly to someone like me and mine? You’d better have mommy pack you a lunch before you show up in Miami, Ronnie, and make sure she tosses in some painkillers while she’s at it, because what we do to you is going to hurt. A lot.
Talk like that is what turns rookies into face-meat scraped off the canvas and put on a stretcher. You who have yet to earn a win here want to talk smack to someone like Stefan Raab? On your best day you could barely lace your own boots, much less his. He’s coming in with busted ribs and he could still make you a grease spot if you looked at him wrong. You’re not showing confidence, Ronnie, just stupidity. We won’t even get into your remarks about my partner because he can, for lack of a better term, speak for himself. Matthews has already stomped your ass and I’m sure he can find some scripture to exemplify that, which isn’t my thing, so we’ll just move on.”
He smirks, just a little bit, before going on.
Zachariah Blood: ”Is this seriously all you have for me? Swiping my catchphrase and implying that you can outlast me where pain is concerned? Kid, I am Pain Personified. I am the Patron Saint of Suffering. Buy the fucking shirt and get a clue. Trying to soak up as much pain as I can is like trying to out-drink an Irishman. It starts with you being bold and running your mouth and ends with you curled up in a ball under the table, spewing waste out of one or more orifices. In fact…”
Reaching into his pocket again, Zachariah takes out a twenty-dollar bill and places it on the edge of the roof with a rock scrounged from the surface below to keep it from blowing away. He points to it with meaning.
Zachariah Blood: ”…twenty bucks says that you’d tap out to my Masochistic Vice in less than twenty seconds. Twenty more says one Sadistic Warlock would have you unconscious for the rest of the night. Make all the big-worded promises you want, kid. Keep digging that grave. I’ve made a career out of breaking bitches like you. You’re better served hiding behind your partners when that bell rings and staying as far away from us as possible. In the process, you might even learn something, like when to talk, when to shut the fuck up and how to pick your battles.”
Just to emphasize his point, Zachariah adds another twenty beneath the rock, just rubbing it right the hell in.
Zachariah Blood: ”And if I do clamp the Vice on you, I’ll even give you a dollar for every second you cry like a bitch before you invariably tap out. That’s what a nice guy I am.”
Not once does he smile during the entire monologue, now staring straight ahead again as he shifts gears.
Zachariah Blood: ”Saint, you belong to Raab. That’s all I have to say about you. Bailey? I don’t know who you are and I don’t give a damn. Apparently you hold and have held some gold here and Ronnie likes the cut, and taste, of your jib. Beyond that…you’re just another warm body to be pounded on en route to victory. Your tenures as champion don’t register with me. You want to impress me, make me remember your name? Hurt me. If you can.”
Now his head dips just a little and we can see his jaw setting, perhaps hear a bit of grinding around the tooth. Then he snorts out another note of mirthless laughter as he looks up.
Zachariah Blood: ”Brian Hollywood. Feeling bold yet? Maybe like you taught us a lesson in Phoenix when your five seconds of non-worthlessness resulted in Madision rolling up my partner? Maybe you find that funny, a big fat ha-ha to the now not-undefeated Unforgiven. How many times have you scrolled back on the clip on your phone or computer, Hollywood? Are you savoring your first victory like a fine zinfandel?”
All at once, his face goes stone-hard.
Zachariah Blood: ”I hope so. But the sad fact is that helping Madison get the pin over my partner won’t erase how the same man needed only one move to make your debut a losing effort. Drugged? No, Hollywood…that was just pressure that you weren’t, and still aren’t, man enough to handle. That’s what happens when a mouse runs afoul of a lion. He has a few seconds to realize how fucked he is before he’s slurped down in one gulp. An assist is not a win. In your case, it’s the mark of death. I will personally be gunning for you at Meltdown and I swear to you that your mother will cry when she sees what I do to you.
Prove me wrong if you think you have a set, but your place is hiding behind the real men with Ronnie while Raab kills Saint and the rest of us turn Bailey into a quivering pile. If you so much as get close enough that I can smell your stench, I’ll fucking eradicate you.”
He shifts his stare to the cameraman, making the view shake.
Zachariah Blood: ”Shut it off. I’m done here.”
The fade to black is sudden and complete.
The cameras quickly re-center on the stunning Lady Rayne as she relaxes on a plush sofa in The Unforgiven’s locker room. Leather-clad legs rest with one crossed over the other, blood-red fingertips clasped around the raised knee as she stares silently at something off-camera. It’s hard to tell if she’s calm, frustrated, furious or a combination of those moods in her silence. The easy answer was all three and several others. Snapped winning streaks, no matter how short, are often met with a dangerous cocktail of negative, degenerative emotional states. Steam and the sounds of running water emit from around the corner as background noise, falling further behind as a door opens off to the side.
Rayne averts her eyes in that direction as Talon and Sentinel walk into the frame. Rayne looks up at her sister and nods slightly, a gesture that Talon returns. Sentinel, having already showered and changed into black jeans and a sleeveless white top, brushes his lips across the cheek of Talon and, as he moves past Rayne, gently sets a heavy hand on her shoulder. He gives that spot a squeeze, a rare gesture of comfort for someone other than his lady. Rayne looks up at him with a trace smile before turning back to her sister as the big man moves out of frame.
Talon: ”He’s taking his sweet time.”
Talon nods toward the showers, prompting Rayne to look that way with a little smirk.
Lady Rayne: ”It takes time to wash the stench of sub-humans like Hollywood and Madison off one’s flesh, dear sister.”
It’s Talon’s turn to smirk, a more sultry and appealing expression on her face as opposed to the dangerous, predatory version that her younger sister wore.
Talon: ”You should not speak so cavalierly about them at this point. They do own a win over us after tonight.”
Lady Rayne: ”You had to remind me of that. I can already hear them crowing about it and we haven’t even gotten a message about the next show yet. They’re going to bray and bark like the animals that they are, claiming some kind of false superiority when all they did was sneak in the back door and steal a win. Decisive? Not hardly.”
Talon: ”But a win nonetheless. We knew this day would come eventually.”
Lady Rayne: ”Just as we know it means nothing. So why do you persist in dwelling on it?”
Agitation had taken over as the predominant emotion on the face and in the voice of Rayne, who had risen from the couch and begun to pace. Talon, perched on the arm of it on the other side, watched her sister patiently. Her flowing black skirt and red peasant blouse gave her a more mature air as opposed to the leather-and-lace of her younger sibling which bordered on rebellious. Rayne continued her irritated diatribe unabated.
Lady Rayne: ”Honestly, sister, this isn’t as big of a deal for you and Sentinel as it is for Zachariah and I. You’ve been around longer. You know how to deal with defeat…”
A barely-perceptible hardness comes to Talon’s expression but passes quietly and quickly.
Lady Rayne: ”…but for Zachariah? It’s disgusting, especially when it comes at the hands of someone who barely survived one move from Sentinel the last time we squared off! And beyond that…”
Talon: ”Enough.”
The firmness in the elder sister’s voice startled Rayne into silence. Talon didn’t yet, but the potency of her tone might have been even more effective. She rose to her full height, six feet and one inch plus what her heeled boots offered, and met her sister’s incredulous stare.
Talon: ”Zachariah has been out of the business for almost a year. Sentinel for even longer. We knew coming in that losses would happen and probably soon after the fact given our ring rust. While you stand and bitch about it, and yes, sister, you are bitching…”
All set to retort, Rayne was halted by the lifted hand of Talon.
Talon: ”…you are forgetting a few details. One is that we brought these two into APW with losses on their records. They started off on a low note thanks to us. Two, and perhaps more importantly where you’re concerned, is that Sentinel was the one who took the fall here, not your precious pet. And thirdly, we’re still in the main event. We’re still at the top of the card. So they got a win after a few tries and Madison found him some cronies to latch on to. They’re still at the middle of the card. We’re on the marquee. We’re putting asses in seats. I think what pisses you off most is that our benefactor was right about Madison and that after the match, Sentinel wouldn’t let Zachariah go after a little vengeance.”
Lady Rayne: ”Which he had every right to!”
Talon: ”Did he? Why?”
Rayne does a fish impression, mouth opening and closing a time or two, looking for the words to vocalize her thoughts but coming up short. She folds her arms across her chest and sniffs irritably. Talon merely smiles and walks to her sister, setting her hands on the tense younger woman’s shoulders. Rayne looks prepared to jerk away but…doesn’t.
Talon: ”I can already tell he’s going to be hard to deal with. You two might want to consider staying in rather than going out with us. Take in a little…quiet time.”
Talon smirked slightly and Rayne rolled her eyes even though she looked like she was considering it. The shower shuts off and Talon moves out of the frame as we fade to black briefly…
TWENTY MINUTES LATER
…before returning with a shot of Rayne leaving the arena with Zachariah Blood at her side, a bag over each of their shoulders. The Masochist, having thrown on a black Affliction-style shirt with red-and-gold accents and a pair of black cargos, looks ready to hurt the first thing that gets in his way. They exit the arena through the back doors and are set to walk to their rental when a black Cadillac Escalade pulls up in front of them, literally out of nowhere. Rayne takes a step back but Zachariah stands his ground, both looking to the rear passenger door as a mountain-sized man in a black suit steps out of the vehicle and opens said door.
Rayne’s eyes widen as a white cloaked figure, hooded so as to mask her identity, steps fluidly from the vehicle. Zachariah’s stare narrows and he snarls, causing the bald man in the black suit to take a step toward him. The woman in white holds up a gloved hand and the large man steps back though his eyes remain focused on the Masochist. The woman speaks in a beautifully-accented voice, traces of mixed Mediterranean accents wrapped in every syllable.
Woman in White: ”Get in.”
Rayne enters the vehicle without protest but Zachariah is resistant until she fixes a cold stare on him, going from tentative to intense within a second. Unwilling and unable to resist a direct order, even an unspoken one, a thoroughly-discombobulated Zachariah enters after her. The woman in white enters after them, allowing the large man to shut the door and re-enter as well before the car pulls away. Once more, we fade to black…
FRIDAY, JUNE 28TH, 2013
…and jump ahead over a week to the present moment. Zachariah is sitting on the edge of a building, presumably somewhere in Miami based on the skyline we can see. Lit up against the dwindling light of dusk, the buildings are monolithic towers of darkness, dotted with random smatterings of light. Conspicuous by her absence is Lady Rayne though as we’ve heard before, Zachariah is more than capable of speaking for himself. And he does so.
Zachariah Blood: ”Before I deal with the misshapen quartet that’s due for punishment here in a few nights, someone, once again, needs to be put to rights:”
His dark hair hangs loose, blowing in the altitude-aided wind. The red-and-black mesh top he has on barely masks his multiple tattoos and offers more comfort than anything ‘solid’ in the heat and humidity of a Florida summer. Zachariah looks over his shoulder at the camera with a snarl.
Zachariah Blood: ”You keep talking your shit, Madison. Go ahead. Yes, you finally got the duke over The Unforgiven thanks to Hollywood being effective for all of five seconds of that match. But remember that you didn’t pin me. You pinned my massive partner. One-on-one? I would eat you alive and leave your new running buddies to put what’s left in a plastic bag to FedEx to your emotional ex-girlfriend. Maybe then she’ll have the courage to do the deed properly instead of looking like a blood-stained attention whore. Play at being heartless where she’s concerned all you want, but the blame will be all yours when my next act of destruction on your worthless ass sends her to hell like the emotional coward that she is.”
The chill of the words and the meaning behind them seems to reach through television screens and monitors to grip those watching and listening. Zachariah snorts and turns back to the view, the Japanese incantation tattooed down his spine shifting with each breath.
Zachariah Blood: ”Now, on to something that matters.”
The sound of him spitting, perhaps landing eventually on the head of some pedestrian, emits before he continues.
Zachariah Blood: ”Another main event match involving the most dangerous team in APW today, The Unforgiven. Except this time around, we’ve got a few extra partners looking for a slice of action, those being Stefan Raab and Jerry Matthews to be precise. Where it comes to the former, I’ve spoken to his agent a few times as I made my way to Miami and we have an understanding. Stefan gets Keaton Saint all to himself and Brian Hollywood belongs to The Unforgiven. As for the bible-thumper, as long as he keeps his quotations and attempts to save souls to himself, there will be no issues. I already have to deal with too many of his ilk in my daily life and while they aren’t quite as…heretical…as Matthews, they’re more than enough. With that out of the way…”
Zachariah seems to be taking something out his pocket, revealed to be a smartphone of unknown make and model. He makes a few taps and sweeps, ignoring a text message and a few e-mails before he finally reaches his destination: the APW website. A few moments later he shoves the phone back into his pocket with a barking snort that, we suppose, is about as close to a laugh as we’ll get.
Zachariah Blood: ”Really? That’s it? Just the guy whose name sounds like a date rape drug? Exactly how many rocks did they have to dig under to find you, Ronnie? And is there an inordinate amount of bagged and labeled body parts in your freezer?”
We could assume that he was smiling with his back to us…but we know better.
Zachariah Blood: ”Take your mouth from around the jocks of your partners and listen up, sport. I’m gonna talk real slow with relatively small words so you get this the first time.”
He swings a leg around and places it on the roof surface, folded arms rested on his bent leg, the other still swinging over the edge high above Miami proper.
Zachariah Blood: ”You’re just another neophyte, Ronnie, playing at having a little webcast for all eleven of your YouTube followers to drool over and trying to act as if you belong in the same ring with The Unforgiven, Raab and Preacher Matthews. That’s not gutsy nor is it entertaining. It’s a malignant case of pants-on-head retardation. At what point in your one-match career here did you suddenly grow enough hair on your grapes to think you could mouth off even jokingly to someone like me and mine? You’d better have mommy pack you a lunch before you show up in Miami, Ronnie, and make sure she tosses in some painkillers while she’s at it, because what we do to you is going to hurt. A lot.
Talk like that is what turns rookies into face-meat scraped off the canvas and put on a stretcher. You who have yet to earn a win here want to talk smack to someone like Stefan Raab? On your best day you could barely lace your own boots, much less his. He’s coming in with busted ribs and he could still make you a grease spot if you looked at him wrong. You’re not showing confidence, Ronnie, just stupidity. We won’t even get into your remarks about my partner because he can, for lack of a better term, speak for himself. Matthews has already stomped your ass and I’m sure he can find some scripture to exemplify that, which isn’t my thing, so we’ll just move on.”
He smirks, just a little bit, before going on.
Zachariah Blood: ”Is this seriously all you have for me? Swiping my catchphrase and implying that you can outlast me where pain is concerned? Kid, I am Pain Personified. I am the Patron Saint of Suffering. Buy the fucking shirt and get a clue. Trying to soak up as much pain as I can is like trying to out-drink an Irishman. It starts with you being bold and running your mouth and ends with you curled up in a ball under the table, spewing waste out of one or more orifices. In fact…”
Reaching into his pocket again, Zachariah takes out a twenty-dollar bill and places it on the edge of the roof with a rock scrounged from the surface below to keep it from blowing away. He points to it with meaning.
Zachariah Blood: ”…twenty bucks says that you’d tap out to my Masochistic Vice in less than twenty seconds. Twenty more says one Sadistic Warlock would have you unconscious for the rest of the night. Make all the big-worded promises you want, kid. Keep digging that grave. I’ve made a career out of breaking bitches like you. You’re better served hiding behind your partners when that bell rings and staying as far away from us as possible. In the process, you might even learn something, like when to talk, when to shut the fuck up and how to pick your battles.”
Just to emphasize his point, Zachariah adds another twenty beneath the rock, just rubbing it right the hell in.
Zachariah Blood: ”And if I do clamp the Vice on you, I’ll even give you a dollar for every second you cry like a bitch before you invariably tap out. That’s what a nice guy I am.”
Not once does he smile during the entire monologue, now staring straight ahead again as he shifts gears.
Zachariah Blood: ”Saint, you belong to Raab. That’s all I have to say about you. Bailey? I don’t know who you are and I don’t give a damn. Apparently you hold and have held some gold here and Ronnie likes the cut, and taste, of your jib. Beyond that…you’re just another warm body to be pounded on en route to victory. Your tenures as champion don’t register with me. You want to impress me, make me remember your name? Hurt me. If you can.”
Now his head dips just a little and we can see his jaw setting, perhaps hear a bit of grinding around the tooth. Then he snorts out another note of mirthless laughter as he looks up.
Zachariah Blood: ”Brian Hollywood. Feeling bold yet? Maybe like you taught us a lesson in Phoenix when your five seconds of non-worthlessness resulted in Madision rolling up my partner? Maybe you find that funny, a big fat ha-ha to the now not-undefeated Unforgiven. How many times have you scrolled back on the clip on your phone or computer, Hollywood? Are you savoring your first victory like a fine zinfandel?”
All at once, his face goes stone-hard.
Zachariah Blood: ”I hope so. But the sad fact is that helping Madison get the pin over my partner won’t erase how the same man needed only one move to make your debut a losing effort. Drugged? No, Hollywood…that was just pressure that you weren’t, and still aren’t, man enough to handle. That’s what happens when a mouse runs afoul of a lion. He has a few seconds to realize how fucked he is before he’s slurped down in one gulp. An assist is not a win. In your case, it’s the mark of death. I will personally be gunning for you at Meltdown and I swear to you that your mother will cry when she sees what I do to you.
Prove me wrong if you think you have a set, but your place is hiding behind the real men with Ronnie while Raab kills Saint and the rest of us turn Bailey into a quivering pile. If you so much as get close enough that I can smell your stench, I’ll fucking eradicate you.”
He shifts his stare to the cameraman, making the view shake.
Zachariah Blood: ”Shut it off. I’m done here.”
The fade to black is sudden and complete.
