I, Zilla

[Shione "SURGE" Ōshima]

"Hell's ravaging fire
Tickles as you stand. You blaze
Like the sun, unburned."

It's supposed to be hard, isn't it? Standing up, when you've been knocked down. Fighting against the agony of a defeat you failed to see coming. Some people lie, they say, "it doesn't get any easier, you know". Either they're lying, or they've yet to experience the heart-wrenching pain of a fall, and the thrill of the ensuing rise. Life isn't a trough; you're not balancing on the edge until you tumble in, at best to never make it back up, at worst to drown... it's a wild landscape of hills and their valleys. Down leads to up, as up leads to down, if you ever mean to move forward at all.

"But", I hear you ask, "Couldn't you just stay on one of those hills, forever?" Yes. You could. You could find your role, find your position, and maintain it ceaselessly – assuming others will let you. But even the most verdant hillside will turn to ruin and rot, in time. What was once beautiful turns to drab brown and gray. It becomes, if not ugly, then merely extant. Stagnation awaits those who stand still. We who move, we who run and jump and take joy in doing...

We always fall, by the estimation of those who do not. I don't call it a fall. I call it part of the journey.

Hello. My name isn't Shione Ōshima – but that's at least half of my true name, if legality is truth. If there's honesty in being the person somebody else wanted to make you. I'm called other things. I'm called everything but what they wanted me to be called, those tyrants by cruel necessity. As I move forward, I wear the name that suits me best...

For now, call me Zilla-chan. The smallest of conquerors.

I was never content to remain still, but I can remember the day I decided to stop worrying and simply run. The day I refused to be held up – or down – any longer, to be myself to the exclusion and dismissal of all other possibilities. It's not a story that's easy to tell; but then, the best stories never are, are they? To pull anything from the heart is to make a sacrifice in blood and bitterness, to face the good and bad in oneself. But if we don't share, we don't learn. If we don't stop to examine the passings of our short and fragile existence, all that forward momentum becomes a heedless stumble. See, it's not just about moving forward; you have to aim for those hills, even knowing you must pass the summit and plunge downward once more. At the top of every one is a lesson. At the bottom? The same. Move, yes. Learn, too.

Where was I? Remembering...

In my memory, it was winter, but I'm fairly sure it was a pleasant summer. Funny how the mind plays tricks. Regardless, I was with my family – that's my father Yuuichi, clad in his stuffy business suit, his hair and nails perfectly kempt, his expression as passive as it has ever been. And my mother, Naoko. Just as retiring in manner. Moreso. They didn't marry out of love – I'm not sure either of them knows the meaning – but to establish a link. To network. It's their way of finding their own hilltop, though I believe without a doubt that they'd stay there forever if they could.

I'd returned from a show, or a training session, I don't remember which. I remember I ached all over. I also remember I was young; fourteen, maybe, younger than I should have been to be doing what I was doing. It was my escape. I arrived home late, finding no dinner upon the table and two stern faces to 'greet' me. I paused to nod at each of them, feeling my energy drain as soon as I lingered. I think it's why I was slow closing the door. Why I was too weak to stop it...

As I slid the screen, a polished shoe found its way to the outer limit. I'm ashamed to say I gasped, recoiling as it was joined by a leather glove – the kind that limo drivers wear, supple and pricey – at about my eye level. I stumbled backward; a polite way of saying I tried to run away, but lacked the wit of purpose.

"Noriko!" There it was, the name I hated, in my mother's shrill voice. "Run!"

The scared brain is stupid. I obeyed. Before the screen was even halfway open I'd scampered into the back, my slender limbs – lacking even a half of the strength I have now – carrying me around furniture and through the narrow corridor to my bedroom. I had a western-styled bed; we don't all sleep on pallets, and now you know. I've since found out that to Americans, monsters hide beneath the bed. Not to me. Bed was a sanctuary, on or under. So what does a stupid, scared little girl to do when confronted with her monsters? She hides in her sanctuary. Or, under it.

By now I could hear raised voices inside the apartment. I'm sure nobody else did. It was a penthouse, with the floor beneath unoccupied. Well-insulated. Happy coincidence, no? Not so much. The men who invaded our loveless little home knew all about it; they'd chosen it for exactly this purpose. I heard my father speaking in his flat monotone, brisk but heartless, attempting to reason with the unreasonable. Then I heard my mother scream. Have you ever heard a person without passion scream? It's like hearing a tormented cat cry out like a human baby. So wrong. So alien. For a moment I didn't realize what it was, and it made me breathe harder, gasping now as I crawled a little further into the darkness.

Why are people afraid of the dark? I always found it comforting. I did now. Especially when the first shot rang out. I heard something explode, but distantly; too fixated on the resonance in my eardrums. Gunfire isn't comforting. Gunfire is the least comforting thing I have ever experienced – and I've sliced open my own forehead with a razor blade. I've had nails driven through my skin.. I've been thrown from twice my own height through an inch-thick sheet of balsa wrapped in barbed wire. Light tubes? Fireworks? Not scary. Guns are scary. Guns kill you, no matter how tough you are.

So there I was, time slipping by as I tried not to whimper and tried to keep breathing beneath my bed. A few inches of duck down and acrylic separating me from a world that suddenly hated me and wanted me to die. I didn't become conscious of much else until a weight landed on top of the bed, the sagging mattress nudging my spine. I couldn't flatten myself any more; so I couldn't move. How could I? I heard voices, without hearing the words, and another weight landed next to the other. Or on top of it. I didn't like either possibility. Who would be on my bed? My sanctuary?

Let me ask you another question. Have you ever heard a person without passion... cry? Because that's what I heard next. A woman who'd shown me no emotion but tepid frustration, suddenly heaving and wracking, spilling tears onto the soft material dividing us. It brought reality back like the crack of a whip. My reaction was anger. Anger. I hated her in that moment; for failing to keep me safe, for failing as a mother, and more than anything for daring to cry. How could she be the one suffering when I was beset by two rock-cold automatons who wanted me to inherit their life and ways?

I was the one who should be crying. But I couldn't. Wouldn't. If I did that, they'd win.

My vision returned with the heated expulsion of rebellious thought, and I peered out from the darkness at two polished shoes – the match for the one I'd so far seen. There was movement above me still, pressing on me, but I ignored it-- because opportunity struck between the eyes. With a heavy thump, a belt dropped to the floor, along with the trousers it held up. I didn't care about either. What I cared for was the glistening temptation of the leather holster attached to that belt. My hand was shaking; actually, my whole body was, but I moved anyway. You've got to keep moving, remember?

That was the day I realized it was true. Staying still? Bad. Hiding? Worse. Stand up for yourself. Run, but forward.

I all but shot from beneath the bed, shouting something – maybe it was "fuck you", we all used to swear in American back in Osaka. We thought it was cool. I'd have thought what I did next was cool, too, if I wasn't so close to vomiting. I fumbled the gun from its holster, the smell of its recent discharge quivering in my nostrils, turning my stomach. Cordite, people like to say; I think that occurred to me, then, but I now know better. It was the first gun I'd touched, and I hoped it would be the last even as the power flowed through me. The shortcut to strength, and I held it.

I pointed it, down the line of my frantic eyesight until the muzzle tickled the nose of the man stood in front of me.

"Get out of my room."

No wonder I'm not in movies. It was all I could think to say, my voice trembling and a tear working free from my eye. I probably blushed – I know I was embarassed and ashamed even as I felt invigorated, even as I felt my shaking finger tighten on the trigger. I didn't check the safety. I didn't even check the gun was loaded. I wouldn't have known. All I knew was that this man – this terrifying, murderous man – had violated my sanctuary. Had made me feel weak and helpless. I'm still not sure which offended me the most. I know that not once did I think about my mother; what she was doing on the bed, or who she was doing it with. She'd provided the vitriol to do what I did, but it wasn't for her...

The tension was unbearable. I seemed to stand there for hours, my finger slowly, slowly squeezing, my breath caught in my throat. I heard a movement behind me, and then I heard laughter. It wasn't from the man whose snot was running down the barrel of his own gun, his own hands flung up by the same cowardly impulse that had made me run. We were the same; both too weak to manage, both needing to learn our place. I suppose, between us, that's exactly what we did.

A rapid exchange went unheard by me. I'd love to tell you every detail, but I want every detail I tell to be accurate. I was too enthralled in fear and desperate bravado to listen to anything but the beat of my own heart. All I can say, is when I felt the man pulled away by his peers, when I heard muttered apologies in my ear, I was conscious only of what remained; a pair of discarded trousers, and a small puddle around them. Yes. We learned our place.

But my place was not where my mother would have it. It was her voice I heard next, as I stood still shaking with the gun still pointing at my vanished victim. With the same careless attitude as his allies, she coldly gripped my wrist and tore the weapon away. I remember trying to pull the trigger as she did; but at the time, she was the stronger. The quicker.

"You should have run," came the hard, passionless scolding of her voice. The voice I hated. "You should have done nothing." And then, the thing I hated most. The thing I still hate most. "Someday, you will marry one of those men."

"Then, someday," I replied without forethought, blazing my rebellion in my eyes and my posture, my fists shaking at my side as I stared down this woman who – moments before – had been suffering so. "I will kill one of them."

That was the day I learned how best to live my life.

There is no challenge so great that I cannot face it, no risk so great that I need hide away. To fall is not shameful, and neither is to run – the shame is in failing to give that action meaning. The shame is in stopping. We will always stumble. We will always falter. We will always feel alone, and afraid, and weaponless. But we never are. Are we?

We can choose what we are, and what we become. There are no destined monsters in the closet, or beneath the bed, no heroes and villains save those we choose to create through being. Each of us can be craven or bravo, man or monster. Perhaps in some sense that means we already are. In that case, there's no excuse. Stand up. Be what you would be.

My name is Shione Ōshima, and I am greater than the sum of my parts.

I am what I make of myself.

I am a conqueror.

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APW Presents: Shione "SURGE" Ōshima
I, Zilla
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From the fading black emerges a visage of primal terror, eyes bugging against eyelids pulled taut, like hazel-yolked eggs sliding wildly about a breakfast pan. Cheeks marred by ten feverishly-pressing fingers stand out in alternating stripes of red and pale tan – as below, irregular teeth gurn the promise of deeper, darker horrors still. Horrors made manifest by the protrusion of a bright red tongue, stopping just a fraction from smearing the lens in this monster's saliva. There's an odd whine, oscillating before the sound levels properly adjust. It sounds like, 'biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiih-dah'.

As suddenly as she so terribly apparated, Shione pulls away from the camera, shifting clutching hands from her face and relaxing into a Cheshire grin. Those hazel eyes previously so alien are now twinkling with mirth and mischief, though there's a note of steely determination beneath – the fire that never quite dies, no matter what else she might display.

"Boo!"

Her tongue briefly protrudes again, though now it's cheeky more than hideous. As she speaks, she settles from the opening mania into a cool and confident demeanour. There's nothing visible behind her but an indistinct gloom; she's standing in soft spotlights, her figure the single shining beacon (orange, natch) in an ocean of darkness.

"This world is dark, and full of terrors. We all seem to stand alone at times; lost to the things that would bite and snare. Sometimes we truly are overwhelmed, and need to fight back with all of our might. Sometimes we have to stand taller than we feel; taller than any would believe we are capable. At other times... we slip and stumble, through a fault of our own. No man or woman, however brave, is a thing of perfection. We all make the mistakes."

Tossing her head, strands both dark and fiery whipping at her cheeks, Shione draws herself higher. The camera zooms out to compensate, leaving her surrounded by a greater quantity of black. Twisting at the hip, she half-turns and takes a sidelong step, the view tracking her as she walks. Every footfall echoes; leather on unyielding stone.

"Last week, I made such a mistake. I stumbled, because I let myself look beyond. Instead of my opponent, I focused on some things I thought greater – I leapt at a shadow. Mr. Million Fingers was good; better than I treated him. I fought as hard as I could, but I had already lost. Kurt Styles was not a man I could simply--"

Abruptly she stops, bringing a boot down with a hard clap. Her hands come together in unison.

"--step on. Alone, he was a danger. In the future, perhaps even more danger, but I looked for the chaos beyond when I should have seen it coming at me; he may not be a part of it yet, but perhaps, in time?"

She arches a brow, rolls her shoulders in a shrug, and turns to face the camera fully once more, hands on hips.

"But this is tomorrow. Many ages away. Today is not about Kurt Styles, not about Michael Jennings and his chaos and man-monsters. Not about the Hands of Black. This... is about hands covered in blood, dripping with hate and torment; pain and despair. Do you know, I have seen hands like that before? Many times and more. Grasping, clutching, and breaking..."

Her tone twists, something savage touching eye and brow, an intensity emerging through that lingering steel-flame. It suits her well, though sits in bizarre synergy with her myriad quirks and the otherwise open manner she exhibits.

"I have felt these hands, and I have these hands."

Without shifting posture, she simply removes said hands from her hips and presents them to the camera. As she does so, the spotlights upon her flicker and widen, revealing more of the room n which she stands. Or perhaps 'chamber' is the right word; the floors and walls are blocks of dark, copper-streaked stone, damp and dank. The devices scattered about are immediately recognizable for what they represent, if not their exact purpose; this is a torture chamber. Propped in one corner is an iron maiden, a rack lying to Shione's left, and a selection of cutting objects upon a table to her right.

Her hands, true to her words, are smeared with dried crimson ichor.

"My opponent is a monster to any man's belief. A beast beneath the bed. A bogeyman in the closet. A mystery to himself as much as us, yes? But these bloody hands enjoy a mystery. A puzzle unlocked through the pain of the flesh. Mine? Yours, Victor Hades? I say, both. Others would say I cannot win this. That the challenge is too much. They must stand by and watch. Try to frighten me, and I'll turn that table on you. Try to tear me apart, and I'll tear back. There's nothing that can be done to me that hasn't been done before. How about you?"

Her hands now lowered, the plucky powerhouse draws and releases a breath, stepping over to the nearby rack. A finger runs along the rough leather straps designed to secure limbs, then along the tines of the winch mechanism. Briefly, her hand fastens upon one, turns it with an effort that sends a pronounced creak through the device. Shione cracks a grin, the same spirit behind it as is ever there; darkened only through her proximity with this place.

"I have faced my demon, Hades. I know who I am. I am the Crashing Wave; I break upon the rocks only to come again, and again, until the rocks lay broken and the land is mine. I can be delayed but never stopped. I am the beating pulse of this world, the spirit of its people and the change that must surely come. Pain?"

Tilting her head questioningly, she slips a hand into one of those leather nooses, tightening it with the other, flexing her fingers experimentally. Her teeth clench, at first into a bare-toothed grin, but it becomes a rictus as she strains and breaks through the strap. A tight roar emits as the break occurs, and she heaves a breath, rounding upon the camera like a wolf, hungry for more, ultimately only energized by the effort. She holds her hand up again, wrist angrily reddened.

"Pain is just pain. It comes and it goes. Like the ocean, it ebbs and it flows. Do you understand?

Clapping her hands back to her hips, she draws herself up, and the light is on her alone, once more. The chamber is gone into the black from whence it came, only the echo of her voice off the walls a reminder of its presence around her.

"I am pain. I ran to Mr. Fingers, but I do not have to run to you. You are where I want to be. Where I am."

A hand lifts and points down with a single finger, the brightly-clad woman stamping a heel to the stone floor once more. She lets the echo die down, slipping her hand back to her hip and throwing out a careless shrug before she continues.

"You? You don't even know who or what you are. At worst, we're the same, but I am one step ahead. So bring your best, monster from hell, Promethian man, and I will bring you mine. Not to prove myself, not to get beyond you... because I will get there no matter what I do. Like a tsunami, the Crashing Wave always finds her mark; and my mark is you."

Again a hand lifts, and again a single finger, but this time it jabs toward the camera. The spotlights shift, striking Shione from below, the effect much like a torch beneath the chin; her expression a pouting glower as she drills her words home.

"Hades. I name you nightmare. I name you myth. I name you my Kerberos."

Her voice oscillates, pitch wildly increasing and decreasing on that final word. It prompts not quite a giggle-- though the shift in expression is much as if she has, the attitude disarmingly girlish again, Shione taking a step closer, bringing herself into intimacy with the camera. The lighting is neutral once more, her features relaxed and tone confiding.

"Some might believe that this three-head dog bars my passage to greater things. Maybe I say the same. But I cannot. I will not. I move forward one step at a time; I take what I must, and give back harder. Faster. So give it to me, Victor Hades. You are my monster. This week, in Philadephia, for one night of glorious pain... you will be my world. And I will be yours. Let us see who is scarier. Let us see who knows about pain. Let us see who is more real. Kerberos?"

She's too close to the camera to see clearly, but she shrugs, her eyes rolling upward to better express the gesture.

"He is just a dog. My dog. My... bitch."

Swaying back from the camera, Shione brings up a fist and beats herself upon the chest, unleashing an ape-like 'ook' that resonates around the darkness-veiled dungeon. Her hazel eyes gleam, reflecting her resolve upon the lens.

"I, Zilla. You, Jane. Let the best monster win."

She can't resist one final grin, her tongue protruding and a v-sign flashing at the camera before it fades to black.