Dull colors steadily clear. The darkness doesn't fade so much as recede, escaping to the edges of your vision. It's like waking up. As Umi begins to speak, the layers of disorientation are still peeling away.
"I do hope that the message is getting through," she begins. You can't see the smile, not yet, but you can hear it. "William Neilson was as clever as he was agile. Mr. Morales watched that match--watched as his rival was tried, tested, and subsequently dismantled. Andrew had the advantage of learning from that, of studying William's mistakes--not to mention an edge in experience and greater speed. Still, though--still, the greatest luchador in the world stumbled and fell."
Even as your sight clears, the view of Umi is far from perfect. Steel bars and a thick layer of glass stand between you, an impenetrable window. Her voice cracks through a low budget speaker.
"A battle against the otherworldly demands more than physical attributes. It takes a single mindedness. It takes a focus all but razor fine. It requires a pureness of intent and an inhuman will, all qualities I'm afraid the previous challengers sorely lacked."
You can see it now, blurry--the smirk that dances across her lips. She hugs the Book of the Dead a little tighter to her side, dragging a fingertip across the window's surface as she paces. It draws your attention to the handprints in the dust. The glass hasn't been cleaned in ages.
"...Something I must give myself a smidgen of credit for. Inaros is a giant, yes; an entity unlike any this company has seen before. He is still a warrior however, and a warrior must be faced in the light. No secrets. No lies. No masks. I take it upon myself to shine that light--to tear open and bare for the world what unruly passengers a challenger might bring. So, the question--little Lisa Seldon. What weakness do you hide? What darkness do you harbor? What unshakeable albatross grips its talons about your scrawny neck?"
She pauses. The smirk fades. Umi's gaze drifts off elsewhere, anywhere but at you.
"I'll admit--you've left me quite the riddle. You're a more inscrutable foe than your predecessors by far... but no one is perfect. You're only human, after all."
Your unsteady vision moves aside. There's windows to the outside here, but they're much the same--cold bars and glass, inescapable. Damage on the surface hints that someone's tried.
"Lisa Seldon. Southside, King's Road, Omega Academy, Rose City, the Hellcats, mother of the Skull Children... I thought, at first, to harp on how thin you've spread. So many plates to spin, Lisa! So many distractions! So many threats that aren't Inaros. Even an expert handler knows never to take one's eyes off the beast, lest you come back with one hand fewer. You've done quite well for yourself though, haven't you? In spite of all that juggling, the stress of running yourself ragged has yet to take its toll. Anxiety, confusion, pressure that would easily crush the average competitor, you continue to haul it upon your back with a witty quip and a devil-may-care attitude.
Interesting, that."
It's starting to become clearer, now. The bars, the reinforced glass... the pattern on the tiles, the smoothness of the walls. Mental health facilities in fiction are always clean--white and padded. Realistically, you don't want white anywhere near those with poor impulse control. You need something that can take a stain.
"Lisa Frankenstein. Hardcore wrestler, extreme rules aficionado, a girl well known for enjoying her toys. Next, I thought, that would surely be the key to unlocking your brain. Most of those wrestling in the tool assisted genre flounder outside it, gasping for air beyond their bubble. Time and time again, those with bloodlust and a deathwish fail when the leash tightens around their throat.
...But you haven't had much issue with that, either.
Have you, Lisa?"
Umi stops pacing entirely, staring straight into you through the dirty window.
"No. Not you. Not yet. You've adapted when pressed--rules, no rules, it's all the same to you. You arrive at the arena and you fight with the same consistency against any opposition and against all reason, somehow unperturbed by any difference in environment. You're wholly unaffected by even the most drastic changes to what should be a routine. Does it even matter to you? Do you even care?
It was then, mulling that over, that it hit me. The pieces all fell into place. I've been putting in so much effort, attempting to climb into your skull when frankly...
I don't need to be there. I don't want to.
Lisa, I'm no therapist, but..."
Umi leans forward, close to the glass.
Your focus comes in just a little clearer, and you realize the truth--
that the handprints are on your side of the glass.
This is a psychiatric hospital, but Umi's not the patient here.
You are.
"...I think you may be very ill."
She clasps her hands together as she leans back, her grin tightening. Her excitement is almost palpable, but she manages to keep it restrained.
"Dimwitted, talentless individuals all across this business lay claim to crazy. It's a cheap intimidation tactic, one we see so frequently that we become numb to it. When I look at you though, Ms. Seldon, I don't see a cheesy facade--I see a cry for help. What truly infuriates you? What terrifies you? What brings you to weep? Nothing! Seemingly nothing at all. In any and all circumstances you are only blasé, caring just enough to crack a snide remark but you never truly seem to care. I'm not sure you're capable of it. I'm not sure you understand genuine emotion on a proper, human level."
Men file in--a few in nurse's scrubs, one with a labcoat and clipboard. They're all dressed as appropriate hospital staff... except for the masks. Black, silk masks, with an Eye of Horus-like symbol writ in gold where their faces should be. They surround Umi, fixing their gaze upon you through the bars.
"You're not well, Lisa. I don't know what's happened to you, but you're a broken shell of what a person should be. You fight, but it's empty. You inflict pain, but there's no love, no hatred, no passion. It's a weightless and mechanical task followed through with a fake smirk and a tawdry one-liner. The last two wrestlers came at Inaros with frail resolve and false pretenses--you approach him with less than that still. Inaros is more than human. You? Lisa, you're less than. You're a hollowed out doll, failing to find her place in the amusement of the undeserving public."
The masked man in the doctor's coat takes notes as Umi speaks.
"You're sick, Lisa. You should be receiving help, not throwing your meager frame against gods. What do you hope to find, Lisa? Do you think winning this tournament will bring you peace? Do you believe this match will grant any semblance of worth to your shiftless identity? How many belts have you won already? How many companies have you joined, and what have they done for you?
Nothing, Lisa.
They've done nothing. You won't find mercy in him, Lisa. You will not find answers, nor will you find meaning... and you most assuredly will not find victory. You cannot reach the highest highs a truly indomitable human spirit is capable of. You ripped another's piercing out without batting an eye. Even in your most heated arguments, you engage with a startling nonchalance. The energy, that astounding adrenaline that drives mothers to lift cars off their young, that fortitude that overwhelms mankind in their bleakest and most desperate moments--
it eludes your grasp. You are, simply, what you are. Nothing more."
Umi's smile has long since departed. She begins to walk, back and forth in front of your window, hugging the book to her chest.
"You're incomplete, Lisa. You're damaged, and that's perfectly fine when you square off against others like yourself. Men fear animals and insects just fine--and that's whereabouts I'd rank you... an animal. Vermin, perhaps. In your emptied empathy however, you lack the gleaming desire, the burning need, the incandescent will that this task demands. In Inaros blazes a justice like the sun, and his fire will consume you whole. Even your ashes will be ashes, Lisa--no amount of ice can withstand the heat of Egypt. You are simply not enough. Or..."
She motions with one hand, giving a subtle wave. Her masked accomplices dutifully march away, disappearing beyond the border of the glass.
"...Or perhaps I'm simply wrong. I did confide that I'm not a therapist, did I not? Perhaps you're not the soulless homunculus I take you for. Perhaps you simply have an extravagant poker face... and all the responsibility, all the rivalries and imminent threats will be dragging you down as you enter the monster's chambers. While your mind is filled with dozens of conflicts and all the emotional turmoil, the contradictory feelings and concerns therein, all the friends you could let down and the foes eager to see you fall, Inaros..."
She stops. She smiles lightly, condescendingly.
"...Inaros, the seven foot tall creature you'll be trapped in the ring with will have but one goal, one priority, one solitary focus and that's to see your heart stop beating. All those unreached goals and repressed emotions hanging above your head--he will bury you alive. On Twitter, you commented that you would rip his tongue out through his nose, if need be--I should really let you know.
His tongue was the first thing the pharaoh took.
I'm sure you're fully prepared for this match, Lisa.
You may not get what you want out of it--"
A door slams open on your side of the glass. Heavy footsteps rush inside. You struggle, but your wrists are bound--thick leather straps, designed for restraining far larger patients than yourself.
"--But I'll see to it that you get what you really need."
The men in uniforms and masks surround you. The doctor's clipboard hits the floor. He pulls a capped syringe from his coat pocket. His assistants pin you down further, flatter and tighter, as Umi looks on from beyond the safety of the barred window. She smiles wide, genuinely... just as one of their gloved hands rises to cover your face.
Post by Lisa Frankenstein on Feb 3, 2019 1:46:43 GMT -5
Lisa Seldon is a lot of things. Loud, annoying, questionably aggressive. She’s also quite dramatic. A boisterous and disorderly eccentric.
For whatever reason tonight, we open in a rundown old church with Lisa giving sermon to a congregation of one film crew and possibly a few pigeons who’ve found their way in. Apparently she’s just playing right into it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to thank you. For the first time in a long time, I feel exactly like myself. Like I should. That is good news for no one else.”
Light streams down through the cracked stained glass, framing our champion as she preaches to us from behind a hastily constructed lectern. She hasn’t dressed for the part, but for whatever reason she is preaching to us through a megaphone.
“I have been a terror. Right now you have Josh Kennedy racking up reigns and records wherever he goes. You have Artemis Kaiser turning good people into chunks of dog food and sadness. You have Bryan Laughlin calling down the world and pushing it all back. I was all of that. Hell incarnate. The champion whose name you wanted for your own but were too afraid to step up and take.
I was indescribable. And through Union Battle I will be again.”
The lectern comes down as Lisa puts her foot through it and sends it off the stage. There’s an intern somewhere around here who had to build that this morning. She’s probably livid.
“The Crown of the King Cobra is to be my coronation. I will lift that belt and feel the world tremble. You will know the plains have shifted. You will know the tides have turned.
You will know every deep, dark and torturous thing I’m willing to do for my cause when I play it out on furious repetition. You will know my worth, my wants. You will know how very little is beyond me and what an awful thing I can be. And believe me I will be so much more insufferable than you even could have imagined. Like this right now times a thousand.”
Lisa punctuates her point by tossing the megaphone to the ground and stepping forward to take a seat on the edge of the stage. It’s quite clear from the look on her face she wasn’t expecting the noise that came with it. The piercing siren passes and her tone takes a dip. Apparently we’re being a little more serious now.
“I don’t know if it’s coming across, but this is a big deal for me. I walked into Union Battle with a very clear intent. This tournament was going to make me and I was going to make it in return.
I like to think I’ve acted on that so far. I’ve made some highlights. I reset my own nose one week and then took someone else’s home with me the next. It’s made for some questionable watching - you probably didn’t want your dear old gran to see me turn a few thousand years of genetic evolution into a creamy tomato soup - but I’ve certainly made my mark. Several x-rays coming out of those shows will attest to that.
I’m making memories and I don’t want to stop. Now I’m halfway through and I can feel it gnawing in my bones. I want this to be the highlight of my career. I want to look back like 40 years from now, when I’ll be 29, and remember I was one of the pillars in this grand coliseum. Right up there amongst the best when the best were truly deserving of that title.
I want that whole world for my own, I want to earn my way back, and no one - nor any thing - is going to take that away.”
Suddenly she steps down and takes a walk. The camera moves backwards as Lisa goes with it, but then a sharp turn to the left takes her up and over the pews.
“So far I haven’t taken the easy road. I’ve been stepped to by a well respected wrestling journeyman and a hot-ass loon who was poised to to be a spoiler. Now he’s off re-evaluating some of his life decisions and she’s on the longboat to Valhalla or wherever goths go when they die.”
She waves it off.
“I did it all, weapons be damned. My deathmatch stylings lending themselves toward improvisation and an ability to not let a little thing like a deviated septum get me down. Now I’m faced with Inaros, a great wall of a thing. A massive, looming and slightly whiffy looking corpse, a prospect that is all at once both engaging and hilarious.”
Lisa steps up on-top of a pew, spins on her heel and then lands seated quite smartly on the top. To think, one false step and you’re looking for another semi-finalist, and there’d be an intern somewhere mumbling about karma.
“Inaros is certainly a prospect. He’s torn through the opposition despite the obvious handicaps of a messed up lobotomy and having no eyes. You know, because he’s a mummy and when I googled it apparently that’s a thing.”
He probably has eyes.
“He has set his stall as an unstoppable juggernaut, but so has every big old fucker over like 6’3” and I’ve won a lot of gold proving that wrong. I mean, I have been doing this for a stupidly long time, all the way back to when Inaros was just a twinkle in a Necromancer’s eye.
Amongst that, I have faced just about every kind of mythical, magical absurdity you could conceive of. Vampires, ghosts, witches, cult leaders, two devils, three angels, a handful of demons, an endless army of annoying clowns, all manner of zombies, a team of space rangers, a team of evil insects, a plague doctor, a cyborg, a dragon, a deathmatch icon who was brought back to life by that same dragon, an evil felt puppet version of myself, a sentient brick, a timelord, some sort of bull god midget man thing, a magician, that nutbag gorilla dude, whatever the fuck Ethan Giles is and every possible kind of psychopath under the sun. And I mean literally all of them, covering evil psychiatrist to murderous pig farmer to those weirdly sexualised little girl ones and everyone in between.
I’ve learned four things beating on all those. Wrestling is joyously batshit, werewolves are desperately underrepresented, a cult leader will always be at least a little bit rapey and every single thing walking about on this earth has a breaking point.”
There’s a noticeable beat as she pauses for breath.
“Everything breaks. Everything falls. The Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, the Berlin wall, fucking godawful How I Met Your Mother; everything that ever was or yet remains to be. Everything inevitably ends.
Inaros isn’t an exception to the rule. He’s a world beater right now. He looks impenetrable. He’s also just two matches into a career and barely been tested. Anyone can get on a hot streak, anyone can start strong and everyone looks like a god when they are standing over an opponent with their hand in the air.
This sport will make you a titan, then tear you down in an instant.”
She takes off again, leaping forward across another couple benches before she lands in front of us. The camera drops and swings up, leaving us looking at her from beneath as her form filters into shadow.
“Inaros will fall. He will fall entirely again and again. He will step to me, weather the storm and then fall to it a thousand times until there’s nothing left of him. He will rise back like the sands in the wind only to be cut down by my hands again.
He will play his part in all of this, make a show of it. He will rise near indefinitely like the shambling cadaver he is, only to find me staring down waiting every time.”
She squats down, breaking through the light.
“I will be the monster in that ring, never stopping, never relenting. I will tear through him like an incandescent horror, ripping and gorging on his mangled, putrid flesh until all that’s left of him is bandages, dust and bone.”
We move again as Lisa hops from her perch into the centre isle. She’s walking with us now. We retreat in her wake. Her voice arches up, rising to the moment.
“I'm not just here to have a good showing. Neither am I here to play the part of another victim on someone else’s rise. I want that Crown of the King Cobra held triumphantly in my bleeding palms and I’m worryingly short on things I won’t do for it.
This means everything to me and nothing to him! He’s not a man, he’s a shadow. I can keep turning this up while he’s walking blind into another grave; and if I have to preside over the single greatest archaeological tragedy in living memory, then I will Lara Croft that motherfucker without a thought toward the consequences.
Probably another curse or whatever. I don’t know.”
She shrugs that thought aside with alarming indifference. There’s some bite in her words now.
“That is what I do. That is what I have always done. I take liberally and show very little respect for the human form, giants, beasts and savages regardless. Inaros is welcome to try and meet me there, but he won’t. He can't, he doesn’t have the stomach for it. They take that out of them. I checked. Research, you know?”
She taps the side of her head.
“See you out there big dude. Good luck finding your way back a second time.”
She offers a little smile at that, then takes off the rest of the way. We pause in step and let her go. One more down. On to the next.
