Post by Artemis Kaiser on Feb 21, 2018 14:13:03 GMT -5
Theo Stillwater was a strong man, capable of carrying the weight of the world comfortably. Young Rodney was nothing to him as he sat on top of his father's frame. From the makeshift mountaintop that was his father’s shoulders, the boy who would transcend reality saw his reflection in the gabbro of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Names of people he would never know burned into his memory as his father stood solemnly before it. Rodney didn’t understand the gravity that he felt, threatening to send him crashing from the six-foot peak to the concrete. He persisted, trying to figure out where the feeling originated. As he looked around, ignoring the coolness of melting ice cream crawling down his hand. There were others, performing some ritual with pieces of paper, but they weren’t as exciting as the man wearing a soldier’s uniform. He stood in salute, close to Rodney and Theo. Rodney’s obvious stare didn’t break the man’s composure and dedication to the stance.
“Rodney, there’s a lesson I need you to learn,” Theo started, which was a common statement to Rodney by now. Every time that his father would pass a piece of his infinite wisdom, he antedated the action with those words. It called Rodney to attention usually, but Rodney found himself fixated on the soldier. Even when Theo began to speak, the soldier didn’t make a move.
He was dark skinned like Rodney and his father, but his eyes were a strange color. For Rodney, even if for a moment, it appeared that the soldier’s eyes were home to a miniature galaxy, with constellations and planets. The soldier never blinked either, which brought a pinch of concern and a teaspoon of wonder to Rodney. He even looked vaguely like the father and son duo.
“There are names here of dead men that will never have their voices heard. They’re only chronicled here for one reason,” Theo’s voice never strayed away from a serious monotone, “it’s to recount the amount of sacrifice that America made towards trying to win a war that they didn’t want to fight. People were sent out to a foreign, dangerous land to die. Their names are here to give the illusion that America cares about each of the soldiers. If they truly cared about the fodder, they would have retreated long before.”
Rodney finally broke away from the soldier as he wanted to read more of the names. Each of them was never going to matter genuinely, and they would fade away from Rodney’s memory soon after they leave. However, they made a statistic to fill the growing space. “Did we win?” he finally asked.
The boy never got an answer.
“If Vietnam or the Soviet Union decided to invade us and won, then we wouldn’t have a wall to promote nationalist propaganda,” Theo spoke harshly, but never broke away from his usual tone, “memorials are a way to write our chapters in the annals of history. Rodney, my son, you need to understand that no matter what…”
Rodney turned back to the soldier.
“History is written by the victors.”
The soldier vanished without a trace. Rodney spun around, trying to find even a small clue, but to no avail. Unable to find him, Rodney returned his eyes to the wall, giving up on his search. Right then, as if something ethereal pointed it out, a name came to his attention.
Charles Stillwater.
A waitress sat down a bowl with a pale beige soup swirling inside it. Shredded pieces of something mysterious lingered around the soup spoon. Rodney moved it over, allowing room for the waitress to return with beef tendon, nicely blanketed in a creamy, brown sauce. This combination contrasted against the white rice bed that the meat was on. Rodney took some chopsticks up, but he was interrupted by the waitress. She poured more tea into his cup, seeing he had finished from the first moment of him sitting down. He tapped on the teacup two times, to which the waitress bowed sincerely and sauntered off to her business.
“Are you surprised to see me here?” Rodney asked as he studied the dish before him, “in China, not in some ethereal plane, playing chess with my mysterious friend?”
“For the uninformed, I’ve come to China earlier than expected because I wanted to learn more about the location. I never had a chance to leave my nest back in America, so this came as a welcome opportunity. That’s why there hasn’t been any word or sight of me since my victory over Elina Cartel, and my subsequent words after that.”
“Now, I’m speaking up, I’m making my presence known since Finnegan Whelan has the idea that I’m not worthy of making it past him.
“Finnegan has never been the nicest of fellows, choosing to be an open alternative to the social norm. He serves the typical by announcing opponents as irrelevant, a common misnomer utilized to deride any idea that a person has a chance. I’ve never been privy to using the word myself,” Rodney took a sip of the green tea, “In my infinite wisdom, I know no person to be irrelevant or of little consequence. A single person can ruin the whole world, while another can save it. That is how heroes and legends are made, from the dregs of ‘irrelevance,’ as one would say.”
“Misunderstandings, I’ve come to see most out of Finnegan,” Rodney stated, taking a fine look at the liquid he chose to ingest. “Primarily, his words at the last show turned the tide of this battle against him.”
“You see, I’m a benign individual when it comes to hostility--mostly because I find it to be primitive to let the violent recesses of your mind dictate your actions. However, misunderstandings are believed to be truths to those who speak them. As such, bringing forward counterpoints does little to sway people. For that, that’s why us fighters have our fists. These are the tools we use to instruct others, whether it be the audience or the person we’re pummeling.”
“Callien,” Rodney’s tone grew stern upon using Finn’s real name, “you said that you would not lose to someone with no history, and nothing to gain?”
“That’s exactly why you’ll lose.”
“I’m nobody, in the world and your perception. I’m a temporary obstacle?” Rodney’s world started to transfigure, where pieces of the restaurant started to fade away for the celestial backdrop that Rodney wandered before, “If I had nothing to gain, I wouldn’t be here. If I were just a wanderer, I wouldn’t have put Elina Cartel down. The fact that I have nothing to gain is a falsehood that I’ll put you down for--with extreme prejudice.”
“I have nothing,” a beat, “and that means I have everything to gain.”
“I have no history, but I have something far more important,” Rodney spread his arms out, causing the galaxy around him to wither and wane, as if he controlled them all, “I have the pen to write my history. I am the author of my existence, maker of my destiny. While you have committed to your reality, where you crossed out names. Pray tell, Callien, when I put you out of this tournament, what will you do?”
“I know the answer because history has already told me.”
“When you speak about history, you need to remember who writes it. It’s the victors that get to make the narrative. You haven’t defeated me, nor do you know me. You have no right to see past me because there’s no future you can make for yourself. There are only the past and the present. For, you, Callien, I know that you have tricks up your sleeves, but I know your best one already.”
“You’ll pack your things and leave with another few lines to tell the story of your failure here,” his voice had gone from a stern monotone to a fiery spat, “you’ll cross my name out of your mind because you’ll never want to relive the days where I defeated you. Or, when you glorified yourself, but then you met someone like me.”
Rodney’s setting returned to the quaint Chinese restaurant. The waitress had been pouring him another cup of tea. The same mannerisms came and went, leaving Rodney to dine on his foreign delicacies. Shark fin soup, beef tendon on a bed of white rice, and a lovely cup of green tea to wash it down. Nothing else seemed out of place, with all the furnishings returned to their ordinary places.
“A man who has no history and nothing to gain.”
Rodney tried some of the shark fin soup, seeming back to his usual, composed self.
Post by Finn Whelan on Feb 21, 2018 19:10:55 GMT -5
NEVER SHOOT THE MESSENGER
Scotty DuVall was a slippery snake. He was an illegal arms dealer who worked the west coast of the States, unaffiliated to line his pockets. He dressed like he was still in the eighties, and the enormous gold chain around his neck could have rivaled Mr. T’s. He ran a hand through his brown pompadour and opened the suitcase in front of him. “It’s all here, yeah?”
Sitting on a crate across from him was Finn. His arms were crossed, and he watched his two Japanese associates as they lifted and moved crates. He shrugged his shoulders. “Twenty-five.”
A change came over Scotty -- he wasn’t happy. “We agreed on fifty.”
“The shateigashira’ll send you the other twenty-five when he sees that everything works.”
Finn was usually an unwilling participant when it came down to these meetings. He kept his hands off the “merch”, and he generally tried to keep his arms crossed in an effort to keep himself unaffiliated. It wasn’t always how it went. Kei had a variety of uses for Finn’s “talents”, and he used them all to his advantage. Finn could handle himself with thugs like DuVall. They never really looked at who he was, or what he could do -- to them, he was just the messenger.
DuVall huffed and pressed his fingers to the table. “You call your boss, and you tell ‘em that you’re not leaving until I get the other twenty-five.”
There were situations Finn never dealt with well, and this was one. He hopped off the crate, standing a full six inches taller than the other man. “You’re kidding, right? Look, I have forty other things to do, DuVall. This happens every time. You get half now and the other half later. No changes.”
But DuVall wasn’t having it. He unholstered his weapon -- a Glock -- and pointed it directly at Finn, who promptly dropped the phone he’d had in his hands. “Call him. Now.”
No one liked having guns pointed in their faces, least of all Finn.
“Look, kid, I know you’ve got more things in your life you value. I know who you're. When you’re not running these little operations for your boss, you’re standing up in front of thousands for their entertainment. If you don’t want me going to the press with this info, or to your other bosses, you’re just gonna call Hideshima and you’re gonna tell him to send the other twenty-five immediately.”
“Alright, fine,” Finn replied, and he slowly knelt down on the ground. In a flash of motion, though, and one that took DuVall by surprise, Finn lifted the lip of the wooden table and thrust it upwards at the SoCal native. The suitcase slid to the floor, and DuVall fell backward with it, the Glock falling out of his fingers. He reached for it, but Whelan was already on his feet and he used the side of his foot to kick it away. “Are you a fucking idiot?”
DuVall struggled to get up -- the table was surprisingly heavy. Finn stamped his foot right on his fingers too, and Scotty let out a cry. “Look, Hideshima is pretty benevolent, but if shit got dirty, he told me to do what I do best.” Finn leaned over and smiled quite leeringly at him.
“You know what I do best? My career is kicking the shit out of other people in a ring for thousands of spectators. You say you know who I am, then you should know what I can do. I’ve forced people to go unconscious, I’ve broken arms in matches, I’ve made people bleed for the hell of it. And you want to threaten me? Good fucking job, dipshit.”
Finn’d had it, clearly. He grabbed for one of the metal pipes sitting on the crates. The last thing that DuVall saw was the Irish-American raising the pipe and crashing it hard against his head. Everything else went black.
You never shoot the messenger.
•••••
"There're many things that define Rodney Stillwater, though he tries to hide in obscurity. Enigmatic. Lost in the clouds. Superfluous. The possibilities are as limitless as he proclaims himself to be . . . and yet, even the beings in the heavens can fall."
Finn sat on the edge of a pier in Seattle, his eyes focused on virtually nothing as he gazed out onto Elliott Bay. The rain fell deafeningly, plastering his clothing to his skin and his hair to his forehead. He didn’t seem at all bothered by it. A stream of watered-down red drips down from where his hand rested on the metallic bar.
“A man not defined by the limitations of humanity, or so proclaimed. Omniscient, ever present - like a god of some kind, who can wander and find his way through life without fighting the nuances of mortality. If you create yourself to be infallible, can you be anything less? Certainly. Absolutely. Because that is the duality of man, and no matter how you try to put a spin on it, we all exist in this plane. There's no higher power. And when you believe in that, Rodney, your nonexistential bullshit comes to heel.”
“Aristotle said it best, I believe, when rambling about moral virtues. Man is an amoral creature because their epistemology begins when subjected to the world and what they are taught. For men, he states that ‘to fall short and to exceed are alike fatal’. Fatal. He calls upon the masses to realize that there must be a balance in all things. Virtues. Morality. Physical libations. If we talk about a balance of humanity, we’ll find that Stillwater is on the falling short portion, while others are in excess."
“This is his fatality. If you cannot understand human nature, if you believe yourself so much more on a higher existence, then you fail yourself. While you rise above and try to adjust yourself to be stronger, faster, more intelligent, change your entire personality to focus and circumvent your opponents so they do not know who you are, eventually you’ll reach the glass ceiling of the cosmos and burn in the ever-burning fires of the sun like Icarus."
“Rodney, you last described yourself as a black hole -- all-consuming, never-ending -- when you fought Elina Cartel. And while you stated she would fail, it was ultimately her inability to rise to the occasion that she failed. But then, he disappeared, save for one little reminder that he still existed.”
“But if you believe yourself to be nonexistential . . . can you really be feared? Can you be taken seriously?” A smile appeared on Finn’s face and he looked up at the sky, rain crashing down on him from above.
“Here’s the thing, Stillwater. This isn’t space, and you’re not an object with such gravity you can pull anything and everything into oblivion. You’re a formidable opponent, and for that . . . I'll walk into this with respect for your talent. But don’t think for one moment that you'll arise as a beacon of light. In that ring, it’s about the nature of humanity, of that ideal you have taken for granted. We do not bleed the essence of the universe, but iron and water. And when it comes down to it, the Wolf will move forward and the Pathfinder will move onto a path that leads away from the cobra and onto another constellation far away from here.”
"The cosmos will not align for you, for there is nothing there but an endless void, Rodney. In that ring, you'll be forced to face humanity, and see the limits of even your being. I am not Elina Cartel. I'll not fall so easily. I'll meet your strength with my own, and I'll fight and persevere as I have since day one of my career. I'll give you the match you deserve to have, but in the end, I'll advance in this tournament. This is a finality.”
With his eyes back to looking at the water, he lowers his head and curves it slightly as his fingers tap along the metallic pole.
“That's what I believe, and it is my beliefs that push me forward. You may change your attacks, you may grow, but I'll meet you head on. I don’t back down. There is no bullshit that you can pull over me. Vachon leapt for me, trying to one-up me. That failed. The skilled technician in McKenna ultimately fell to me too. you're no different, no matter what spin you place on yourself. Like them, you'll fall.”
He turns his head finally, to face the camera. “There is so much at stake, Rodney. And you will not be the one to halt my ascension. When we meet in Shanghai, you will meet your devolution. And it will be a glorious sight. I'll see you soon.”
