Post by Zachariah Blood on Jun 17, 2013 4:51:42 GMT -4
The barking cheers of thugs and homeless passerby are powerfully loud in the humid night air. The noise echoes back and forth off moisture-slicked brick walls, broken up by the noise of shattering bottles and rattling metal. Illuminated by not-so-strategically-placed oil drums blazing of fire, the scene opens up in a back alley whose location is better off left a mystery. Drunks and malcontents grip the cage, shaking the linked metal as a pair of dirty, sweating brick shithouses pound on each other’s skulls like angry orangutans.
Wholesome family entertainment.
An instigator of Latin descent, the fires setting off his greasy hair and demeanor nicely, is waving around wads of bills and yelling in a butchered mixture of Spanish and English about bets for the next fight. The larger of the two brawlers in the cage, a heavily-tanned brute of a man, catches the arm of his opponent, a stocky Mediterranean fellow, when he goes for a haymaker. His other arm is caught when he swings from the other side, too. The look on his face is priceless as the larger man drives his head once, twice, three times into the bridge of his nose! When he lets go, the dark-haired man drops like a sack of bricks, his nose splattered across his face.
Emcee: ”And yer winner…Rex Mortis! Give ‘im a hand! Now…takin’ bets for his next match! Can the big bast’d make it t’ree inna row? C’mon, people…place them bets! Do I hear 20? How ‘bout 50? Over here? Yessir…”
The camera cuts away as the huckster in the cage starts collecting wagers for the next fight, the tanned beast roaring in victory. Our view cuts to the spray-painted wall facing the cage where a man stands in silence. Dressed in tattered old blue jeans, a black hoodie draped over his shoulders with the hood masking his face, he seems to be paying little attention to the fight that just finished. Thickly-applied tape surrounds his wrists and hands, as well as his ankles and shins, his feet bare against the dirty concrete.
Lady Rayne: ”Right here.”
A familiar female voice speaks up, confident and assured. Lady Rayne slinks up to the cage in a sultry fashion, studded leather belts worn in a loose ‘X’ around her waist, her legs coated in skin-tight leather. Matching ankle-high boots with a little heel on them just make those stems that much more delectable as she walks up to the suddenly-silent emcee and holds out a trio of c-notes, a grin on her features.
Lady Rayne: ”Three hundred says that your jacked-up gorilla in there goes down. Hard.”
Over against the wall, the hooded man looks up slightly, revealing the lower half of his face where pale lips twist into a tooth-baring grimace. Arms lower to his sides as he pops his neck on one side, then the other, while the emcee laughs out loud at Rayne’s wager.
Emcee: ”I like yer style, chica, but yer throwin’ money away. Ain’t no take backs, hear?”
Lady Rayne: ”What’s the matter? Afraid your man is gonna lose?”
The hooded man snorts, moving toward the cage slowly until he’s standing behind Rayne’s left shoulder. The emcee takes Rayne’s offered bills, dollar signs dancing in his eyes.
Emcee: ”’Ey, you called it. Where’s the poor sap you’re doomin’ to extinction?”
The man looks over in the direction of Zachariah who throws back his head, dropping the hoodie to the pavement. The emcee’s eyes go a bit wide as the Masochist points a taped finger at Rex.
Zachariah Blood: ”Right there. Open the fuckin’ cage.”
The man starts stuttering while Rayne puts on the sweetest grin. She whispers something in Zachariah’s ear as he passes and slaps him on the ass before he steps into the cage. Blood is poker-faced as he yanks the cage door shut behind him and personally locks it after the emcee scrambles out to avoid being trapped. The closing door echoes in the alley. Rex Mortis, seeing what he’s up against, is briefly concerned but puts his fists up and starts circling Zachariah. They match distance and speed while Rayne, watching from the outside, starts addressing the fans watching at home.
Lady Rayne: ”Zachariah will address you two, Madison and Hollywood, in due time. Right now, I suggest you pay close attention to what I’m about to say:”
She looks over her shoulder at us as Rex charges Zachariah, nearly smashing him against the wall of the cage before Blood slips out of the way, throwing a hard kick to his opponent’s right hamstring. Rex shakes out his leg a bit and whirls around, glaring at a stone-faced Blood.
Lady Rayne: ”Your respect doesn’t mean shit to us. All your professing of it for Sentinel amounts to is putting lipstick on a corpse. It’s a pathetic attempt to save face because you can see as clearly as we that this tag match coming up in Phoenix? It’s going to be loss number three. But hey, at least you already know what to say Tuesday morning when your new reporter friend comes up to you, right? You can just blame it on your partner. Because if there’s one thing that Chris Madison knows how to do…”
In the midst of her words, Rex again charges Zachariah and takes a stiff uppercut to his solar plexus. The shot robs him of his breath for a moment but doesn’t keep him from delivering a fierce left hook to the jaw of the Masochist. It rings Zachariah’s bell, causing him to veer to the side a bit. The big man swings with a right but this time strikes air. Zachariah comes up under him and blasts him in the jaw with a palm strike. Rex is reeling even before Blood comes in close, literally grabbing him by the ears and driving knees into his midsection, hoping to crack a rib or two.
Lady Rayne: ”…is shift blame and fail to take responsibility for his failures. And before you, Hollywood, think you’re going to pop off at the mouth about what you see here?”
She points at the camera as she addresses Hollywood, then gestures to the cage with a grin. An elbow to the top of Zachariah’s skull drops him to a knee but he has the wherewithal to roll backwards as Rex tries to plant a knee into his proboscis. There’s nothing fancy about this fight. Zachariah gets an arm up to block another punch and gets in close to Rex, rearing up so that the back of his head cracks against the button of Rex’s chin. Blood starts to flow almost immediately as Zachariah audibly snarls at his jawed opponent.
Lady Rayne: ”Bear in mind that this isn’t a message to either of you. You’re not worth that. No, this is Zachariah blowing off steam. This is relaxation to him. Ponder that before you open your fly catcher to talk shit.”
The emcee is pleading with Rex to get his shit together and he very nearly does, grabbing Zachariah around the throat with both hands and throwing him to the concrete. He comes within a hair of kicking a 50-yard field goal with Blood’s skull before the Masochist rolls out of the way. Still on his back, Zachariah whips out with his left leg and kicks the side of Rex’s right knee. The cracking sound is near-sickening and the big man buckles to one knee as Blood rises, looking to put an end to this fight.
Rayne watches with undisguised pleasure as Zachariah whips around with a right-side backhand to the dome then reverses directions for a left-handed strike. A moment’s pause to measure…and then a buzzsaw-style kick lands dead on Rex’s temple. The big man wavers, then falls to the concrete as the crowd roars at the carnage. The cage is unlocked and Zachariah stalks out of it as Rayne finger-wiggles the emcee over.
She takes her money and without another word gathers up Zachariah’s hoodie, hooks her arm in his and leads him away. A few moments after a fade-out, we come to Zachariah standing alone outside a convenience store, hoodie properly worn and zipped up halfway, a pair of black cross-trainers covering his feet. The bloody, dirty tape is still wrapped around his hands and fingers as his cold stare is locked on the camera, evidence of the recent fight still visible on his face.
Zachariah Blood: ”Let’s get something straight here, Madman. What you call hypocritical is what I call a public service announcement…an example of what you were walking into. The only thing I speak is the truth. It was an attempt to eliminate the excuses I knew you’d start spewing after we decimated you and your chicken-wuss partner by illustrating that, put simply, you weren’t in our fucking league. But it just went right…”
Zachariah lifts a hand and swoops it over the top of his hooded head with a ‘swoosh’ sound.
Zachariah Blood: ”…over your fuzzy, fuckin’ dome, didn’t it? What, did Sentinel slam you into the mat so damn hard that he made you forget your childhood or something? By the way…nice shot, cracking me in the face with that Singapore cane last Monday. Really. Nice shot, sport.”
His thumbs-up is utter sarcasm. It might as well be a middle finger.
Zachariah Blood: ”Rex’s mother hit me harder than that when I told her he got his looks from her side of the family.”
The little bell on the door tinkles prettily as Rayne comes walking out of the store, a plastic sack held in her hand with what looks like a few bottles and some other things. She walks past Zachariah, pausing to press a steel-meltingly hot kiss to his lips before sauntering past and getting into their rental car parked nearby. Blood’s response is to lick his lips hungrily before his attention is back on the camera.
Zachariah Blood: ”My mentality isn’t your concern. My physicality is what you should be worried about. Especially since the last time we danced I almost caved your face in. Yeah, you delivered a pounding to me as well. I’ll give you that. But it wasn’t enough, was it? You kick me in my skull like a mule and try to crack my spine in half, the badass fresh off a reign of terror in Japan…but you can’t seal the deal. When you actually have a win on your record here, Chrissy?
Then the shit you talk will mean something. And until someone in this company beats humility into me, I’m going to keep doing what I do. Because I’ve earned that fucking right. Get what I’m saying?”
Zachariah turns and spits on the pavement, a little crimson in the globule of saliva.
Zachariah Blood: ”If I were you, I’d stop worrying about my attitude and go find your partner, maybe try and get his head in the game. The Unforgiven has already proven superior to both of you but the least you could do is try to give us a fight. Talon might think you two have a chance but I’m not convinced. All you’ve proven is that you have a lot of big talk and nothing to back it up with.
The third time ain’t the fucking charm. Monday won’t be your fucking night. There won’t be any rules or boundaries to get in the way of Sentinel and I beating you two clowns into paste. Bitching about it won’t make it less true. So the way I see it you have two options here: you show up, dragging Hollywood down to the ring and actually have his back while we kick your asses…or you watch us destroy him and complain to anyone who’ll listen after the fact. But you’re going down either way. Get used to it.
Welcome to our pain.”
Blood walks off camera, we hear a door open and close before a call pulls away…then darkness reigns.
Wholesome family entertainment.
An instigator of Latin descent, the fires setting off his greasy hair and demeanor nicely, is waving around wads of bills and yelling in a butchered mixture of Spanish and English about bets for the next fight. The larger of the two brawlers in the cage, a heavily-tanned brute of a man, catches the arm of his opponent, a stocky Mediterranean fellow, when he goes for a haymaker. His other arm is caught when he swings from the other side, too. The look on his face is priceless as the larger man drives his head once, twice, three times into the bridge of his nose! When he lets go, the dark-haired man drops like a sack of bricks, his nose splattered across his face.
Emcee: ”And yer winner…Rex Mortis! Give ‘im a hand! Now…takin’ bets for his next match! Can the big bast’d make it t’ree inna row? C’mon, people…place them bets! Do I hear 20? How ‘bout 50? Over here? Yessir…”
The camera cuts away as the huckster in the cage starts collecting wagers for the next fight, the tanned beast roaring in victory. Our view cuts to the spray-painted wall facing the cage where a man stands in silence. Dressed in tattered old blue jeans, a black hoodie draped over his shoulders with the hood masking his face, he seems to be paying little attention to the fight that just finished. Thickly-applied tape surrounds his wrists and hands, as well as his ankles and shins, his feet bare against the dirty concrete.
Lady Rayne: ”Right here.”
A familiar female voice speaks up, confident and assured. Lady Rayne slinks up to the cage in a sultry fashion, studded leather belts worn in a loose ‘X’ around her waist, her legs coated in skin-tight leather. Matching ankle-high boots with a little heel on them just make those stems that much more delectable as she walks up to the suddenly-silent emcee and holds out a trio of c-notes, a grin on her features.
Lady Rayne: ”Three hundred says that your jacked-up gorilla in there goes down. Hard.”
Over against the wall, the hooded man looks up slightly, revealing the lower half of his face where pale lips twist into a tooth-baring grimace. Arms lower to his sides as he pops his neck on one side, then the other, while the emcee laughs out loud at Rayne’s wager.
Emcee: ”I like yer style, chica, but yer throwin’ money away. Ain’t no take backs, hear?”
Lady Rayne: ”What’s the matter? Afraid your man is gonna lose?”
The hooded man snorts, moving toward the cage slowly until he’s standing behind Rayne’s left shoulder. The emcee takes Rayne’s offered bills, dollar signs dancing in his eyes.
Emcee: ”’Ey, you called it. Where’s the poor sap you’re doomin’ to extinction?”
The man looks over in the direction of Zachariah who throws back his head, dropping the hoodie to the pavement. The emcee’s eyes go a bit wide as the Masochist points a taped finger at Rex.
Zachariah Blood: ”Right there. Open the fuckin’ cage.”
The man starts stuttering while Rayne puts on the sweetest grin. She whispers something in Zachariah’s ear as he passes and slaps him on the ass before he steps into the cage. Blood is poker-faced as he yanks the cage door shut behind him and personally locks it after the emcee scrambles out to avoid being trapped. The closing door echoes in the alley. Rex Mortis, seeing what he’s up against, is briefly concerned but puts his fists up and starts circling Zachariah. They match distance and speed while Rayne, watching from the outside, starts addressing the fans watching at home.
Lady Rayne: ”Zachariah will address you two, Madison and Hollywood, in due time. Right now, I suggest you pay close attention to what I’m about to say:”
She looks over her shoulder at us as Rex charges Zachariah, nearly smashing him against the wall of the cage before Blood slips out of the way, throwing a hard kick to his opponent’s right hamstring. Rex shakes out his leg a bit and whirls around, glaring at a stone-faced Blood.
Lady Rayne: ”Your respect doesn’t mean shit to us. All your professing of it for Sentinel amounts to is putting lipstick on a corpse. It’s a pathetic attempt to save face because you can see as clearly as we that this tag match coming up in Phoenix? It’s going to be loss number three. But hey, at least you already know what to say Tuesday morning when your new reporter friend comes up to you, right? You can just blame it on your partner. Because if there’s one thing that Chris Madison knows how to do…”
In the midst of her words, Rex again charges Zachariah and takes a stiff uppercut to his solar plexus. The shot robs him of his breath for a moment but doesn’t keep him from delivering a fierce left hook to the jaw of the Masochist. It rings Zachariah’s bell, causing him to veer to the side a bit. The big man swings with a right but this time strikes air. Zachariah comes up under him and blasts him in the jaw with a palm strike. Rex is reeling even before Blood comes in close, literally grabbing him by the ears and driving knees into his midsection, hoping to crack a rib or two.
Lady Rayne: ”…is shift blame and fail to take responsibility for his failures. And before you, Hollywood, think you’re going to pop off at the mouth about what you see here?”
She points at the camera as she addresses Hollywood, then gestures to the cage with a grin. An elbow to the top of Zachariah’s skull drops him to a knee but he has the wherewithal to roll backwards as Rex tries to plant a knee into his proboscis. There’s nothing fancy about this fight. Zachariah gets an arm up to block another punch and gets in close to Rex, rearing up so that the back of his head cracks against the button of Rex’s chin. Blood starts to flow almost immediately as Zachariah audibly snarls at his jawed opponent.
Lady Rayne: ”Bear in mind that this isn’t a message to either of you. You’re not worth that. No, this is Zachariah blowing off steam. This is relaxation to him. Ponder that before you open your fly catcher to talk shit.”
The emcee is pleading with Rex to get his shit together and he very nearly does, grabbing Zachariah around the throat with both hands and throwing him to the concrete. He comes within a hair of kicking a 50-yard field goal with Blood’s skull before the Masochist rolls out of the way. Still on his back, Zachariah whips out with his left leg and kicks the side of Rex’s right knee. The cracking sound is near-sickening and the big man buckles to one knee as Blood rises, looking to put an end to this fight.
Rayne watches with undisguised pleasure as Zachariah whips around with a right-side backhand to the dome then reverses directions for a left-handed strike. A moment’s pause to measure…and then a buzzsaw-style kick lands dead on Rex’s temple. The big man wavers, then falls to the concrete as the crowd roars at the carnage. The cage is unlocked and Zachariah stalks out of it as Rayne finger-wiggles the emcee over.
She takes her money and without another word gathers up Zachariah’s hoodie, hooks her arm in his and leads him away. A few moments after a fade-out, we come to Zachariah standing alone outside a convenience store, hoodie properly worn and zipped up halfway, a pair of black cross-trainers covering his feet. The bloody, dirty tape is still wrapped around his hands and fingers as his cold stare is locked on the camera, evidence of the recent fight still visible on his face.
Zachariah Blood: ”Let’s get something straight here, Madman. What you call hypocritical is what I call a public service announcement…an example of what you were walking into. The only thing I speak is the truth. It was an attempt to eliminate the excuses I knew you’d start spewing after we decimated you and your chicken-wuss partner by illustrating that, put simply, you weren’t in our fucking league. But it just went right…”
Zachariah lifts a hand and swoops it over the top of his hooded head with a ‘swoosh’ sound.
Zachariah Blood: ”…over your fuzzy, fuckin’ dome, didn’t it? What, did Sentinel slam you into the mat so damn hard that he made you forget your childhood or something? By the way…nice shot, cracking me in the face with that Singapore cane last Monday. Really. Nice shot, sport.”
His thumbs-up is utter sarcasm. It might as well be a middle finger.
Zachariah Blood: ”Rex’s mother hit me harder than that when I told her he got his looks from her side of the family.”
The little bell on the door tinkles prettily as Rayne comes walking out of the store, a plastic sack held in her hand with what looks like a few bottles and some other things. She walks past Zachariah, pausing to press a steel-meltingly hot kiss to his lips before sauntering past and getting into their rental car parked nearby. Blood’s response is to lick his lips hungrily before his attention is back on the camera.
Zachariah Blood: ”My mentality isn’t your concern. My physicality is what you should be worried about. Especially since the last time we danced I almost caved your face in. Yeah, you delivered a pounding to me as well. I’ll give you that. But it wasn’t enough, was it? You kick me in my skull like a mule and try to crack my spine in half, the badass fresh off a reign of terror in Japan…but you can’t seal the deal. When you actually have a win on your record here, Chrissy?
Then the shit you talk will mean something. And until someone in this company beats humility into me, I’m going to keep doing what I do. Because I’ve earned that fucking right. Get what I’m saying?”
Zachariah turns and spits on the pavement, a little crimson in the globule of saliva.
Zachariah Blood: ”If I were you, I’d stop worrying about my attitude and go find your partner, maybe try and get his head in the game. The Unforgiven has already proven superior to both of you but the least you could do is try to give us a fight. Talon might think you two have a chance but I’m not convinced. All you’ve proven is that you have a lot of big talk and nothing to back it up with.
The third time ain’t the fucking charm. Monday won’t be your fucking night. There won’t be any rules or boundaries to get in the way of Sentinel and I beating you two clowns into paste. Bitching about it won’t make it less true. So the way I see it you have two options here: you show up, dragging Hollywood down to the ring and actually have his back while we kick your asses…or you watch us destroy him and complain to anyone who’ll listen after the fact. But you’re going down either way. Get used to it.
Welcome to our pain.”
Blood walks off camera, we hear a door open and close before a call pulls away…then darkness reigns.
