Post by Daniel MacNamara on May 18, 2020 19:02:43 GMT -5
The Disquiet.
It was back, and it was in force, the same kind of silence that’d preceded a predator’s path as it made its way through the forest, stalking down what it perceived as its prey. The only thing was, this was not the woods, and the predators here walked on two legs in lieu of four, and their claws and teeth were both lesser, and still somehow greater, than their mammalian counterparts in a strange paradox that shouldn’t make sense. It was strange that a room beneath a bar in Chicago could hold that kind of stillness, especially with living, breathing, men in it. If you could call them just men, anyways. They were beasts in the skin of men, animals that dreamt that they wore the mantle and walked as them. If they were men, then nightmares were normal dreams and maelstroms were soothing winds to guide sailors to safety.
It was in that dark, dank, basement that one could find at least part of the men that made up the Genocidal Hate Brigade. There was no revelry in that room, none of the stereotypical infernal fraternity antics that seemed to be abound when they hit the stage. Just the disquiet of their presence as they sat among one another; Dakota was to himself on a nearby couch, the patriarch of the Smith family was all too content to quietly pick his nails with the patina laden blade of a knife that was far older than himself while Daniel sat there, one of Johnny Vachon’s friends switching out the needle of his tattoo gun.
Entering that room was probably more akin to walking into the den of a hungry animal than the makeshift tattoo parlor that it was.
A buzz broke that disheartening silence, like a ship breaking through the fog to seek safety in the harbor, the quiet shift of the needle meeting flesh as the artist brought it up and down to turn the inkstained flesh black from its original pallid color, blotting out the tribal markings that were laid into him. The glyphs of a long lost language were slowly being shifted into nothing but a void like design, as if Danny was intent on removing the last traces of his familial heritage and traditions from his flesh.
“You know what I hate, Dakota?” That Irish accent rang out as Danny finally spoke, as he looked over at the bearded man. “I hate hypocrisy.”
Dakota without missing a beat, still picking Danny’s brothers flesh from his fingertips speaks up - his eyes never leaving the blade in his hands. “ Don’t we all?” There was a nonchalant tone to the Butcher’s voice as if he wasn't really listening at all. Danny heard that tone, he knew it all too well, considering the early years of his life. Those blue eyes stayed on the butcher however, especially as the tattoo artist guided the needle across his flesh.
“When Dick Deveraux made the unfortunate mistake of taking his bat to you, did the Chicken Man opt to stop the match? Did he pause and wait for you to recover? Or did he, as Chickens do, crow about his victory as if he’d slayed you out himself?” Danny asked those questions, but he knew the answer all too well, of course he did, he’d just waited until this moment to speak on it. “Afterall, he’s the Union Battlegrounds champion now, surely such a bold hero who’s made it his mission to rout men like us from his company wouldn’t ever take advantage of another’s bad luck, would he?”
Removing the knife’s blade from underneath his fingernail, a creeping smirk growing on his torn lips as Dakota held the knife in front of his face - examining it’s dull and rusted blade with an almost murderous gleam.
“ Of course he would Daniel… Because Bryan Williams is a man of opportunity, a hero who only wears the mask when it’s convenient to him. A maggot who has squirmed his way out of the muck and grew legs, climbing up the mountain on the back of other people’s accomplishments, Bryan Williams is nothing more than a wound who won’t stop festering, a slit along the wrists that just refuses to heal. He’s bleeding himself out and he doesn’t even realize - why Danny? Because he’s too proud of that crown atop his head, he’s too obsessed with the championship around his waist, he’s enthralled by the glamour of being at the top, so much so that it has blinded him to the possibility of falling. “
A snort of derision was given by Danny almost immediately.
“Funny, how the alleged hero of this story, the defender of the Battlegrounds doesn’t seem to be much more than a charlatan, a masked man who pisses in the wind about disparity -- but only when it happens to him. A sad little king, on a sad little hill, who can’t even seem to comprehend that he’s lost the war that he wants to keep fighting battles for.”
Taking his eyes from the blade, Dakota leans forward and pushes himself up from the couch. Letting his arms fall to his side, He holds the knife by it’s rusted blade, letting his fingertips rub against its abrasive texture as he walked over to Danny. The Butcher gazes over Danny’s frame, watching as the needle blacked out any remembrance of his former life. With loud pops and cracks coming from his knees, Dakota crouches down so that he’s at head level with Danny.
“ But what about my beautiful butterfly? “
A grin formed across Dakota’s face, one that could turn a stomach into knots with it’s deranged satisfaction, and yet it didn’t seem to register with Danny or bother him if it did. It wasn’t due to Danny’s own courage but rather the fact that he seemed oddly at peace with Dakota so close to him.
“ The girl with the universe in her eyes, so bold, so succulent, yet in my hands? Helpless.”
As he licked his lips, you could see Dakota’s eyes gleam with a perverted sense of accomplishment - like he was reliving those moments in his head. Oh, the grin that creeped over Daniel’s own face as he watched the man savor those thoughts in his head like remembering a meal. As for Daniel? Well, the glyphs of his shoulder were already pieced together and colored black, the artist working on the skin around it, as if trying to draw out a metal pauldron; a piece of cracked plate armor right over the part of him where he so often wore the NVR World Championship.
“Butterfly. She is that, isn’t she? .. Yet, she’s also more than that. Miss Rhyder is nothing short of dangerous. The two of you, you draw interesting parallels, don’t you? I wouldn’t say the commonality is that of a coin with two sides, but you’re definitely within the same circle. The light, the dark, honestly Dakota, the two of you are almost cosmic in how much you could probably relate.”
The Butcher’s grin grew wider, more agape as a few piercing chuckles escaped his lungs. His eyes lowered back to the knife in his hand, which had begun to stain his hand with it’s brownish crimson rust.
“ You see it too? Not two sides of the same coin, no… But two creatures born in the same darkness, in another life… Maybe she would have had my child… Maybe I would have murdered her instead. But she dances with Williams, Chicken man… And thus her fate is sealed Daniel… Both of theirs. When you beat Bryan, you took something away from him. You stole his sense of safety. You cracked the walls on his tower that he’s built on the backbones of others, he’s slipping…And do you know why?”
Daniel watched him, his eyes still on Dakota as the artist progressed the ink that was working its way over his upper back, his shoulders, the man was still working on his first piece but even now, the pauldron that encompassed his entire shoulder was starting to come into fruition, the hard lines on the outside were becoming more defined, the center colors that were as black as castle forged steel almost seemed to shine. The glyphs were blacked out entirely now, but in their place was a cracked wolf’s head, looking as if a well placed blood had destroyed the cosmetic insignia placed among his armor. Fitting.
“Because he’s starting to realize that for all his talk of me chasing glory, he’s done nothing with his career but try to chase relevance, to find solace in being depended on, all he’s ever accomplished is being a stepping stone for greater warriors?”
Stretching the limits of his grin to the point where it’s almost tearing at his flesh - Dakota snaps the tip off of the knife with his thumb. Letting the handle fall to the ground he then brings his hand up and starts to carve three familiar letters into his own forehead.
G H B
With the blood now trickling down his face, Dakota taps at his forehead with one finger - his eyes now locked with Danny’s.
“ When The fake Butcher halted my progress and let Williams walk away with my championship… Did you see me complain? Did you see me blame him for my own mistake? No… But Bryan… The second he felt the ground crumbling from underneath him, he called you a coward… He gave excuses as to why he fell, he told a tale older than time itself. One of hypocrisy, one that you can only tell when you’re afraid of losing everything you’ve worked for. He blamed the GHB, instead of blaming himself for not being as prepared as he should have been. He wants to find any excuse to give other than the fact that you Danny?”
Standing back up, Dakota lets the tip of the knife fall from his hands. He then runs two fingers over his forehead, wiping away some of the blood before reaching out and gently smearing it over some of the finished ink on Danny’s shoulder, an act that Daniel didn’t shy away from as he felt the heat of the blood and the man’s hand go over his own newly bleeding flesh.
“ You beat him. In his own house. You walked up to our so called champion, and you struck him down in the prime of his reign, and now? Now he has to rest all of his hopes on the wings of Indi Rhyder…”
“The wind off the wings of a butterfly can cause a hurricane, they say. If any mosaic winged harbinger could pull that off in practice, then it has to be our beloved Indi.”
A slow shake of his head, he was finally moving to sit up properly as the Tattoo Artist decided that he was finished for now, that enough ink had been applied and that Daniel needed time to properly heal. Still straddling that chair, he placed his palms on the ‘shoulders’ of it, grasping it as he let those light colored eyes of his behold his new found mentor.
“Indi once said that everyone has a home. We’re living, breathing, examples of that. A home for everyone, for the bastards, malcontents, ne’er do wells and outcasts that no one else is willing to love. We’re what that our cosmic friend has aspired to paint into a star laden picture with her lovely words. She didn’t mean us, of course. She wouldn’t ever want to think that it’s men like us that inevitably craft the world that people like her want to live in.” Oh, the grin on Daniel’s lips was strangely bittersweet, as if this had been considered before. Maybe it had been.
“Butterflies don’t play in the mud and the filth, it’s always the rats and the other vermin that build within it, and to craft that better world? You have to get dirty.”
Taking a few steps back, Dakota closes his eyes and lets his head roll around his shoulders - his face now wearing what some would call a crimson mask - but this wasn’t a mask, this was who he was. With blood trickling down his flesh and into his unkempt beard, he never felt more like himself than when he was embraced by his own warmth. Opening his eyes back up Dakota stared at Danny, in the same way that a proud father might look upon their child when they meet every expectation.
“Look around you Danny… Every brick in this building was built by destruction, by tearing something down and making it into something else. This world was created by hellfire and disaster, winds tore through rocks and carved them into canyons, earthquakes shattering mountains created the wasteland that we now live in. You can’t deny nature, you can’t hold back the coming storm, and we are that storm… A plague on everything that is, because that is our nature… To destroy, to deconstruct those who hold themself in such high regard that they fall into the mindset that they really are the heros. That this is their story, that they are mightier than dirt they walk on. “
Letting out a growling sigh, another morbid chuckle escapes from behind The Butcher’s lips.
“ But it’s from that dirt in which all are born. Covered in blood, bodily fluid smearing our tiny innocent bodies… We’re born into violence, and so we become violence... That’s something that Indi and Williams could never quite get their fingers on, they reject the most primal parts of themselves and they throw their accusations onto others when that violence shows. They look at us, here in our home, here in a place where we can be free and they spit on it - because to them? This is chaos, this is unacceptable! This isn’t them, and so like the animals they pretend to be… They lash out, attacking something that they wish they had. A place to belong, an unjudging family in which to thrive in. A collection of men and women who just want to kill the world, and rebuild into something better, something more… Understanding. “
His chuckle turns into a giggle, that of glee as his blood stained teeth peer out from behind his beard. Dakota’s eyes wandering Danny’s frame, waiting for a response, and what he got? Was just that.
“You mean Three bel-- Wait, I suppose it’s two belt Bryan now, isn’t it? And it’s only two belt because those that book for Union Battlegrounds had the forethought to make our match a non title one. Not that the Chicken Man will ever acknowledge that, just like he won’t acknowledge that the circumstance of the win that got him the belt matches the one in which I beat him. Japan was rough for him, being utterly thwarted by Aokigahara. A stumble when your opponents have been nothing but successful as of late?”
Daniel shrugged, and then sighed.
“We’re all champions, current and former, in some way or the other. Indi, with her Unyielding championship in Valor, Bryan with the belts he’s been chasing, so desperate to be the Company Man that he’s always envisioned himself as. Indi? She seems more intent on conquering the literal cosmos than fighting. Maybe that’s the the point, to be the intergalactic warrior princess who flies in on butterfly wings, driven by Gehenna Winds that comes at our arrival, to do us all in like the dragons that get bloody fucking done in at the end of the fables.”
There it was, that snort of derision.
“That’s the thing isn’t it, Dakota? They never tell the flipside of the fairy tales. They don’t state about how maybe the dragons just wanted to be left the fuck alone. They don’t state that the acts of aggression orchestrated by the knights and alleged do gooders are the reasons that the ghouls and goblins are stirred up and vengeful. No, I’m afraid that just like all the pretty fairy tales in the world, only one side gets told. It’s because for our stories to be heard, they turn into horror and tragedies and tales of woe that make the people who hear them so uncomfortable that they want to crawl out of their own skin.”
Pause. Beat. He just sighed, getting up to his feet as he shrugged those broad shoulders, a smirk starting to pull across those lips as he watched the other man.
“Guess it’s time that we tell our own story, isn’t it?”
While listening to Danny talk, Dakota’s twisted grin turned into a genuine smile, it snuck past him, even he didn’t know it was there. This causes Dakota to step forward, so that he’s standing in front of the young man. Raising his arm and placing two fingers on Danny’s chin, clutching it as his smile brightened before slowly letting his fingers slip down back to his sides.
“ Our Story… It’ll be the very last story ever told. But this Danny? This match? Bryan Williams? Indi Rhyder? They are just a chapter. Our beginning… And their end. Dragons attack because it’s who they are… When a starving dog mauls a child, is the dog bad? No…It doesn’t even understand the concept. It just knows that it’s hungry. And me and you Danny… We are fucking Ravenous. “
And that’s when Danny looked towards the camera, instead of Dakota.
“...And we’re going to eat everything that you fucking have because none of you can stop us.”
And like that, the screen glitched up before cutting to black.
It was back, and it was in force, the same kind of silence that’d preceded a predator’s path as it made its way through the forest, stalking down what it perceived as its prey. The only thing was, this was not the woods, and the predators here walked on two legs in lieu of four, and their claws and teeth were both lesser, and still somehow greater, than their mammalian counterparts in a strange paradox that shouldn’t make sense. It was strange that a room beneath a bar in Chicago could hold that kind of stillness, especially with living, breathing, men in it. If you could call them just men, anyways. They were beasts in the skin of men, animals that dreamt that they wore the mantle and walked as them. If they were men, then nightmares were normal dreams and maelstroms were soothing winds to guide sailors to safety.
It was in that dark, dank, basement that one could find at least part of the men that made up the Genocidal Hate Brigade. There was no revelry in that room, none of the stereotypical infernal fraternity antics that seemed to be abound when they hit the stage. Just the disquiet of their presence as they sat among one another; Dakota was to himself on a nearby couch, the patriarch of the Smith family was all too content to quietly pick his nails with the patina laden blade of a knife that was far older than himself while Daniel sat there, one of Johnny Vachon’s friends switching out the needle of his tattoo gun.
Entering that room was probably more akin to walking into the den of a hungry animal than the makeshift tattoo parlor that it was.
A buzz broke that disheartening silence, like a ship breaking through the fog to seek safety in the harbor, the quiet shift of the needle meeting flesh as the artist brought it up and down to turn the inkstained flesh black from its original pallid color, blotting out the tribal markings that were laid into him. The glyphs of a long lost language were slowly being shifted into nothing but a void like design, as if Danny was intent on removing the last traces of his familial heritage and traditions from his flesh.
“You know what I hate, Dakota?” That Irish accent rang out as Danny finally spoke, as he looked over at the bearded man. “I hate hypocrisy.”
Dakota without missing a beat, still picking Danny’s brothers flesh from his fingertips speaks up - his eyes never leaving the blade in his hands. “ Don’t we all?” There was a nonchalant tone to the Butcher’s voice as if he wasn't really listening at all. Danny heard that tone, he knew it all too well, considering the early years of his life. Those blue eyes stayed on the butcher however, especially as the tattoo artist guided the needle across his flesh.
“When Dick Deveraux made the unfortunate mistake of taking his bat to you, did the Chicken Man opt to stop the match? Did he pause and wait for you to recover? Or did he, as Chickens do, crow about his victory as if he’d slayed you out himself?” Danny asked those questions, but he knew the answer all too well, of course he did, he’d just waited until this moment to speak on it. “Afterall, he’s the Union Battlegrounds champion now, surely such a bold hero who’s made it his mission to rout men like us from his company wouldn’t ever take advantage of another’s bad luck, would he?”
Removing the knife’s blade from underneath his fingernail, a creeping smirk growing on his torn lips as Dakota held the knife in front of his face - examining it’s dull and rusted blade with an almost murderous gleam.
“ Of course he would Daniel… Because Bryan Williams is a man of opportunity, a hero who only wears the mask when it’s convenient to him. A maggot who has squirmed his way out of the muck and grew legs, climbing up the mountain on the back of other people’s accomplishments, Bryan Williams is nothing more than a wound who won’t stop festering, a slit along the wrists that just refuses to heal. He’s bleeding himself out and he doesn’t even realize - why Danny? Because he’s too proud of that crown atop his head, he’s too obsessed with the championship around his waist, he’s enthralled by the glamour of being at the top, so much so that it has blinded him to the possibility of falling. “
A snort of derision was given by Danny almost immediately.
“Funny, how the alleged hero of this story, the defender of the Battlegrounds doesn’t seem to be much more than a charlatan, a masked man who pisses in the wind about disparity -- but only when it happens to him. A sad little king, on a sad little hill, who can’t even seem to comprehend that he’s lost the war that he wants to keep fighting battles for.”
Taking his eyes from the blade, Dakota leans forward and pushes himself up from the couch. Letting his arms fall to his side, He holds the knife by it’s rusted blade, letting his fingertips rub against its abrasive texture as he walked over to Danny. The Butcher gazes over Danny’s frame, watching as the needle blacked out any remembrance of his former life. With loud pops and cracks coming from his knees, Dakota crouches down so that he’s at head level with Danny.
“ But what about my beautiful butterfly? “
A grin formed across Dakota’s face, one that could turn a stomach into knots with it’s deranged satisfaction, and yet it didn’t seem to register with Danny or bother him if it did. It wasn’t due to Danny’s own courage but rather the fact that he seemed oddly at peace with Dakota so close to him.
“ The girl with the universe in her eyes, so bold, so succulent, yet in my hands? Helpless.”
As he licked his lips, you could see Dakota’s eyes gleam with a perverted sense of accomplishment - like he was reliving those moments in his head. Oh, the grin that creeped over Daniel’s own face as he watched the man savor those thoughts in his head like remembering a meal. As for Daniel? Well, the glyphs of his shoulder were already pieced together and colored black, the artist working on the skin around it, as if trying to draw out a metal pauldron; a piece of cracked plate armor right over the part of him where he so often wore the NVR World Championship.
“Butterfly. She is that, isn’t she? .. Yet, she’s also more than that. Miss Rhyder is nothing short of dangerous. The two of you, you draw interesting parallels, don’t you? I wouldn’t say the commonality is that of a coin with two sides, but you’re definitely within the same circle. The light, the dark, honestly Dakota, the two of you are almost cosmic in how much you could probably relate.”
The Butcher’s grin grew wider, more agape as a few piercing chuckles escaped his lungs. His eyes lowered back to the knife in his hand, which had begun to stain his hand with it’s brownish crimson rust.
“ You see it too? Not two sides of the same coin, no… But two creatures born in the same darkness, in another life… Maybe she would have had my child… Maybe I would have murdered her instead. But she dances with Williams, Chicken man… And thus her fate is sealed Daniel… Both of theirs. When you beat Bryan, you took something away from him. You stole his sense of safety. You cracked the walls on his tower that he’s built on the backbones of others, he’s slipping…And do you know why?”
Daniel watched him, his eyes still on Dakota as the artist progressed the ink that was working its way over his upper back, his shoulders, the man was still working on his first piece but even now, the pauldron that encompassed his entire shoulder was starting to come into fruition, the hard lines on the outside were becoming more defined, the center colors that were as black as castle forged steel almost seemed to shine. The glyphs were blacked out entirely now, but in their place was a cracked wolf’s head, looking as if a well placed blood had destroyed the cosmetic insignia placed among his armor. Fitting.
“Because he’s starting to realize that for all his talk of me chasing glory, he’s done nothing with his career but try to chase relevance, to find solace in being depended on, all he’s ever accomplished is being a stepping stone for greater warriors?”
Stretching the limits of his grin to the point where it’s almost tearing at his flesh - Dakota snaps the tip off of the knife with his thumb. Letting the handle fall to the ground he then brings his hand up and starts to carve three familiar letters into his own forehead.
G H B
With the blood now trickling down his face, Dakota taps at his forehead with one finger - his eyes now locked with Danny’s.
“ When The fake Butcher halted my progress and let Williams walk away with my championship… Did you see me complain? Did you see me blame him for my own mistake? No… But Bryan… The second he felt the ground crumbling from underneath him, he called you a coward… He gave excuses as to why he fell, he told a tale older than time itself. One of hypocrisy, one that you can only tell when you’re afraid of losing everything you’ve worked for. He blamed the GHB, instead of blaming himself for not being as prepared as he should have been. He wants to find any excuse to give other than the fact that you Danny?”
Standing back up, Dakota lets the tip of the knife fall from his hands. He then runs two fingers over his forehead, wiping away some of the blood before reaching out and gently smearing it over some of the finished ink on Danny’s shoulder, an act that Daniel didn’t shy away from as he felt the heat of the blood and the man’s hand go over his own newly bleeding flesh.
“ You beat him. In his own house. You walked up to our so called champion, and you struck him down in the prime of his reign, and now? Now he has to rest all of his hopes on the wings of Indi Rhyder…”
“The wind off the wings of a butterfly can cause a hurricane, they say. If any mosaic winged harbinger could pull that off in practice, then it has to be our beloved Indi.”
A slow shake of his head, he was finally moving to sit up properly as the Tattoo Artist decided that he was finished for now, that enough ink had been applied and that Daniel needed time to properly heal. Still straddling that chair, he placed his palms on the ‘shoulders’ of it, grasping it as he let those light colored eyes of his behold his new found mentor.
“Indi once said that everyone has a home. We’re living, breathing, examples of that. A home for everyone, for the bastards, malcontents, ne’er do wells and outcasts that no one else is willing to love. We’re what that our cosmic friend has aspired to paint into a star laden picture with her lovely words. She didn’t mean us, of course. She wouldn’t ever want to think that it’s men like us that inevitably craft the world that people like her want to live in.” Oh, the grin on Daniel’s lips was strangely bittersweet, as if this had been considered before. Maybe it had been.
“Butterflies don’t play in the mud and the filth, it’s always the rats and the other vermin that build within it, and to craft that better world? You have to get dirty.”
Taking a few steps back, Dakota closes his eyes and lets his head roll around his shoulders - his face now wearing what some would call a crimson mask - but this wasn’t a mask, this was who he was. With blood trickling down his flesh and into his unkempt beard, he never felt more like himself than when he was embraced by his own warmth. Opening his eyes back up Dakota stared at Danny, in the same way that a proud father might look upon their child when they meet every expectation.
“Look around you Danny… Every brick in this building was built by destruction, by tearing something down and making it into something else. This world was created by hellfire and disaster, winds tore through rocks and carved them into canyons, earthquakes shattering mountains created the wasteland that we now live in. You can’t deny nature, you can’t hold back the coming storm, and we are that storm… A plague on everything that is, because that is our nature… To destroy, to deconstruct those who hold themself in such high regard that they fall into the mindset that they really are the heros. That this is their story, that they are mightier than dirt they walk on. “
Letting out a growling sigh, another morbid chuckle escapes from behind The Butcher’s lips.
“ But it’s from that dirt in which all are born. Covered in blood, bodily fluid smearing our tiny innocent bodies… We’re born into violence, and so we become violence... That’s something that Indi and Williams could never quite get their fingers on, they reject the most primal parts of themselves and they throw their accusations onto others when that violence shows. They look at us, here in our home, here in a place where we can be free and they spit on it - because to them? This is chaos, this is unacceptable! This isn’t them, and so like the animals they pretend to be… They lash out, attacking something that they wish they had. A place to belong, an unjudging family in which to thrive in. A collection of men and women who just want to kill the world, and rebuild into something better, something more… Understanding. “
His chuckle turns into a giggle, that of glee as his blood stained teeth peer out from behind his beard. Dakota’s eyes wandering Danny’s frame, waiting for a response, and what he got? Was just that.
“You mean Three bel-- Wait, I suppose it’s two belt Bryan now, isn’t it? And it’s only two belt because those that book for Union Battlegrounds had the forethought to make our match a non title one. Not that the Chicken Man will ever acknowledge that, just like he won’t acknowledge that the circumstance of the win that got him the belt matches the one in which I beat him. Japan was rough for him, being utterly thwarted by Aokigahara. A stumble when your opponents have been nothing but successful as of late?”
Daniel shrugged, and then sighed.
“We’re all champions, current and former, in some way or the other. Indi, with her Unyielding championship in Valor, Bryan with the belts he’s been chasing, so desperate to be the Company Man that he’s always envisioned himself as. Indi? She seems more intent on conquering the literal cosmos than fighting. Maybe that’s the the point, to be the intergalactic warrior princess who flies in on butterfly wings, driven by Gehenna Winds that comes at our arrival, to do us all in like the dragons that get bloody fucking done in at the end of the fables.”
There it was, that snort of derision.
“That’s the thing isn’t it, Dakota? They never tell the flipside of the fairy tales. They don’t state about how maybe the dragons just wanted to be left the fuck alone. They don’t state that the acts of aggression orchestrated by the knights and alleged do gooders are the reasons that the ghouls and goblins are stirred up and vengeful. No, I’m afraid that just like all the pretty fairy tales in the world, only one side gets told. It’s because for our stories to be heard, they turn into horror and tragedies and tales of woe that make the people who hear them so uncomfortable that they want to crawl out of their own skin.”
Pause. Beat. He just sighed, getting up to his feet as he shrugged those broad shoulders, a smirk starting to pull across those lips as he watched the other man.
“Guess it’s time that we tell our own story, isn’t it?”
While listening to Danny talk, Dakota’s twisted grin turned into a genuine smile, it snuck past him, even he didn’t know it was there. This causes Dakota to step forward, so that he’s standing in front of the young man. Raising his arm and placing two fingers on Danny’s chin, clutching it as his smile brightened before slowly letting his fingers slip down back to his sides.
“ Our Story… It’ll be the very last story ever told. But this Danny? This match? Bryan Williams? Indi Rhyder? They are just a chapter. Our beginning… And their end. Dragons attack because it’s who they are… When a starving dog mauls a child, is the dog bad? No…It doesn’t even understand the concept. It just knows that it’s hungry. And me and you Danny… We are fucking Ravenous. “
And that’s when Danny looked towards the camera, instead of Dakota.
“...And we’re going to eat everything that you fucking have because none of you can stop us.”
And like that, the screen glitched up before cutting to black.