Post by SYREN IS BEST on Apr 21, 2014 23:08:11 GMT -5
A: IT MIGHT CRACK UP!!!
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There are places, and there are places between the places. And then there are places in the cracks and shadows even between those un-places: a system of dark metaphysical tunnels where men may slip and fall and become no longer men, but abominations; balls of unbound energy and emotion. No longer any purpose. No longer any form.
All else fades away with torturous sloth until only hate and despair remain.
And then finally nothing.
But there are certain ones who can use these tunnels to travel between worlds. By slipping between the shadows, they may enter worlds that don't even exist to mundane chodes like you and me.
Why do so few have this power? And why them?
Fate, maybe?
You have to be careful throwing a word like Fate around. Plenty of good men have died doing ridiculous things because they began to believe that this god or that god needed them to accomplish some inane quest.
So not Fate then. Maybe just a bit of skill and luck. Maybe a lot of luck. In this world, there were only two men known to have the ability.
One of those men is fucking dead: LilJungleMan, who for all his hard work and loyalty went from witch doctor, to OCW Television Champion, to High Wizard of L'Ardanthian majicks, to hilarious flunkey, to a dead sack of meat and bones.
The other man is the One True OCW World Champion Scott Syren. And yeah, you might have heard how he is the best at everything. If so, you heard right.
There are those who would seek to intimidate Scott Syren by way of a history lesson... of the many strategies attempted against him, this may be one of the most short-sighted. For what is a few years jumping from wrestling federation to wrestling federation measured against seven thousand years of turmoil and strife?
### About 3 Earth Years Ago [Approximately 7,000 L'Ardanthian Years Ago] ###
In those days, the Chimera's Talon was one of several free companies of mercenary soldiers who had come out of the defunct kingdom of Arri-Arraj in the far East of L'Ardanth. Infighting and revolution had reduced the kingdom to a third world hell. The king's generals, in turn, divided their men into independent bands and marched west, no longer loyal to anyone or anything but coin. Sometimes these Free Companies of Arri-Arraj would fight together under this or that rich lord; other times they would find themselves pitted against one another.
So it was for 200 years.
Many of the companies were wiped out by way of bloody conflict in those years. Some lingered in one city too long until they dwindled and disbanded, or were assimilated into the official structure of the local military. Others grew and changed and persevered.
Of the half dozen remaining bands, The Chimera's Talon held the distinction of being strongest and most feared... as it always had, even in the days when Arri-Arraj was kingdom rather than wasteland. Back then, the Chimera's Talon was an elite commando unit known as the King's Fist. The specialized training given to members of the Fist was preserved and passed down, influencing the strategies and skills of that company long past the days when the last Arri-Arraj-born member of the Talon had fallen under enemy sword.
200 years later, it was still elite, still deadly, but no longer led by a king. Instead, it was captained—via democratic election—by a relatively recent recruit who called himself only “Syren”.
Syren claimed to have almost no knowledge of their world or their ways, but nobody paid much attention to that. The ranks of the Chimera's Talon had long been open to every stripe of exotic foreigner, so long as they could follow command and kill without hesitation.
Before Syren rose to the captaincy, he was no officer at all, but simply another faceless soldier: row ten, position three in the fourteenth unit of the second company. When Syren marched as such, the Talon was 12,000 men strong, and they were marching on siege of a castle called Redmoat at the behest of a lord named Worthingham who had no hand in the robust sea trade of northwestern L'Ardanth, and wanted Redmoat for its harbor.
But Redmoat would not fall easily. It had earned its name centuries before, when it had been erected as a temporary military camp whose inhabitants defended themselves against wave upon wave of goblin hordes, battling so fiercely that the moat they had built around their camp became a thick, crimson soup.
Of the Talon's 12,000 men, almost 11,500 would die taking Redmoat. The ranks of the fallen included the captain, all three lieutenants, Lord Worthingham, his four sons, and every member of his personal guard.
There was a point, just before dawn on the fifty-seventh night of siege, when it was believed that the battle was over... a sort of loss on both sides. A point when each side had suffered extreme losses, when all of the Talon's ballistae and all of Worthingham's catapults had been destroyed, when all of Redmoat's gates had been breached and its water supply poisoned, when the Chimera's Talon simply did not have the manpower left to take the city.
Or so it seemed.
It was at this pivotal point when this man, this stranger, Syren rallied the last 500 men of the Talon who had managed to retreat back to camp. He first encouraged everyone to do their part binding and cleaning wounds as best they could, meting out a quick and merciful death to those brothers who could not be saved. Next, he insisted that they all throw down their shields and instead pick up a second weapon up from one of the fallen littering the battlefield. Any man who could still walk was conscripted into this final regrouping and consolidation of the Talon. Those who had lost hand or arm during the fighting was given a triple draught of poppy milk and then had blades lashed to their raw stumps. For his own part, Syren wielded his longsword in his right hand and a cruel spiked mace in his left. Others fought with two swords, or sword and warhammer, or dual axes, or some other combination. Not a single man hid behind weighty shield on the morning of the final assault on Redmoat.
Savagely armed thus, the 500 men stormed the badly-burned gates of Redmoat one final time, surprised and killed the last of Redmoat's city defenders—who numbered above 2,000—and gained entry to the palace (not by guile or strategy, but through sheer force of mass rage and brutal will) where they made quick work of the palace guard and royal family.
When Lord Phaernelius Ransell of Redmoat found himself on his knees, surrounded by the severed heads of his wife and children, with Syren's swordtip upon his throat, he asked: “Wherefore do you do this, man? Any who would have showered you in gold for my death all lie themselves dead on the field of battle! I beseech you—let me live! Let me live, sir, and I will buy out whatever contract you had with the Worthinghams. Nay, I'll double it!”
A man behind Syren snarled, “Do not listen to him! The Chimera's Talon has not survived for 200 years by playing the games of the highborn, nor by allowing rival Lords to buy us out from under one another.”
“We'll have your gold after we have your head anyhow!” taunted another.
Syren seemed to consider the man's plea for a moment, but the tip of his sword remained locked to Lord Ransell's throat. “I am but a soldier of the Chimera's Talon,” he answered finally. “Most of these men behind me have been with the Talon longer than I... who am I to defy their will? You see, Lord Ransell... Worthingham paid half our contract in advance, and so we are honor-bound to complete half of that contract. No more, but certainly no less.” And with that, and a mockingly apologetic shrug, he cut the man's head exactly halfway off to a chorus of much cheering and merriment from his men.
The Chimera's Talon spent three fortnights drinking, eating and raping their way through the riches of Redmoat. They seized whatever ships came into the harbor, consuming, hoarding, or squandering the goods on board, depending on the nature of them. Until finally the ships stopped coming altogether, and then they divided into two groups: 200 men boarded the four best of the stolen ships on a mission of exploration to find out if any undiscovered lands or peoples lay beyond the western horizon. The remaining 300 said farewell to their brethren, swelled their ranks with the angry slave youth of Redmoat and marched away almost 1,000 men strong, leaving Redmoat in chaos and ruin behind them, looking for their next contract.
They were led on this march by the stranger Syren, who had become their new, unanimously-elected captain during those weeks of feasting and plunder.
### PRESENT DAY ###
Scott Syren sits at a hotel room desk, eating room temperature tomato soup directly out of a can with a plastic spoon. He is a different sort of captain these days, back in his home world. But the skewed sense of justice and the unrelenting need to see things through to their end—whatever end—still drives him.
As does his unflinching loyalty to those who would call him brother, and to those who would look to him for guidance.
The sense of honor that so often comes off as self-parody remains intact... but the mind and spirit have suffered greatly during the seven thousand years away from this world... not that he was ever all that sane to begin with.
“You know that's supposed to have a can of water added to it,” advises his mustacioed transvestite friend and traveling partner, Berta, gesturing towards the can of soup. “And its also supposed to be, you know, heated up...”
“Mrrhm, fuck it,” replies Syren with great wit and charisma.
“So,” says Berta, making totally natural and not-at-all-contrived conversation: “are you ready for Total Demolition?”
“I guess,” says Syren. “I'm fighting a guy named The Raper or something?”
“Hilarious. You know who you're fighting, although I guess I can't expect you to take him any more seriously than you take anyone else... but Danny is worth a moment or two of preparation. He's one half of the tag team champions... although now he's suddenly part of a new tag team, and the other tag champ is hanging out with Team Brianna, so there's that... maybe it could be an advantage, seeing as how you're all into underhanded plots and mind games these days.”
“Team Brianna,” Syren says with disdain. He spits on the hotel room floor for emphasis, a display of deep hatred he picked up during a campaign on the ice plains of Northern L'Ardanth. “If The Raper and his woman are hanging out with Team Brianna, they're no doubt two more pawns suckling at the poisonous teat of Corporate OCW.”
“No, not Danny, just his old tag partner... I don't know what Danny's relationship with Team Brianna is, if any. War Games is going to take care of itself man... OCW will be lucky if it even exists after that travesty of an 'event'. So maybe you should quit obsessing over Team Brianna and the Family—”
“Same thing.”
“What?”
“Team Brianna and the Family... Dean... Kenshin... MJ... all the cool kids. All of their terrible, cringe-inducing, scripted for a TV-G rating jokes. All of their fake-ass planned-months-in-advance feuds and title shots making a mockery of this company. The War Games disaster is only the beginning of a slow, painful death if we allow this backroom string-pulling to continue. Team Brifamily... Familanna... DEAN... NOT DEAN... unmanned drones... fluoride in the water supply... UFOs... it's all the same thing, man.”
“So you've said. A billion fucking times. But maybe, just maybe, it's time to forget about that for a minute and focus on Danny.”
Syren rubs his goateed chin thoughtfully. He tosses the empty soup can on the floor and takes a handful of tasty-looking oxycodone pills from his pants pocket and sets them on the table. “So he's not named The Raper?” He places a small rectangle of cellophane over the top of the pills and begins to crush them using a plastic lighter.
“No, his name is Danny B. His nickname is The Ripper, not the fucking Raper. What the hell are you doing?”
Syren takes out the hotel keycard and uses it to arrange the crushed-up medicine into two long lines. “What, this? Well, Berta, I'm going to insufflate these pills nasally to achieve a euphoric feeling of well-being sometimes known as 'getting high'. And you are also going to do that with me. Because we are still free-ass Americans, despite what Dean would like us to believe. Fuck, can you believe he even snuck a sheriff onto the roster? Guy might be old as shit, but that doesn't make him any less of a fuckin' narc.”
Berta folds his arms across his unrealistically-boxy fake tits. “We always smoke weed before we sniff prescription narcotics. What is up with you lately?”
Syren shakes his head sadly. “Not anymore, friend. Dean put nanobots in all the weed. It isn't safe.” He sniffs the powder through a rolled-up hotel receipt, then hands the straw-shaped paper to Berta. “So the guy isn't named The Raper then?”
Berta sniffs his line quickly and fiercely. He nods at Syren, who nods back because they're both super smooth operators who enjoy doing drugs and living outside of society's norms because they are really super edgy and cool and not mainstream.
Berta itches his nose irritably while what Syren just said registers in his mind, and then he groans in exasperation. “No, his name is Danny B. and his nickname is The Ripper. I literally just fucking said that.”
Syren grins. “Yeah, I know. It's just funny when you get mad because your tits turn purple.”
“Yeah, that isn't really funny. I think it's some sort of deep tissue infection due to the fact that I got them implanted for sixty bucks in some country who's name I can't pronounce.”
Syren gets up and begins to pace the hotel room. “So... it's 'The Rapper' then... you mean Richard?”
“No, not The Rapper, you stupid dick. The Ripper. The fucking Ripper, Danny fucking B. Ripper, Ripper, R-I-P-P-E-R, Ripper.”
“Ha, you just said 'P-P'!!!”
Berta does an actual physical face-palm.
“Okay, okay, so The Ripper. So like he literally rips people in half? Or is it like a sex thing? Like he's got a huge dick and he rips up—”
“It's just a name,” Berta interrupts. “Like 'Hardcore Jim Jerkson' or 'Badass Dicky Cummings' or whatever. Like, you know, he's like a ripper, man. He rips people up in the ring. Rips them apart by being good at wrestling and stuff.”
“That doesn't make any sense,” Syren insists
“Well not literally I guess, no...”
“Oh, good. Because if he literally ripped somebody apart in the ring he would go to jail for murder. Assault at the very least. And who the fuck is Dicky Cummings?!”
“Let's forget about names for a minute and concentrate on something more practical. Like the fact that he's been in a ton of different promotions, had a ton of high-profile feuds, a whole big list of different title matches... the dude has done a lot of stuff.”
“We've all done a lot of stuff, Berta.” Syren stares at the wall for a moment, thinking about something. “Type a querey into the Googlebox and see if he ever ripped one of his title belts in half. Maybe that's what The Ripper means.”
“It's just a fucking name! Actually, I don't even know if he's calling himself The Ripper anymore... he and his new tag partner are going by a new moniker...”
“Really? What's his new name.”
Berta refuses to answer.
“What's his new name Berta?”
Berta mumbles something unintelligble.
“I didn't quite catch that.”
Berta sighs. “They're calling themselves The Demons of Death.”
We cut to a wide shot (
[if this is on camera, I still don't really know what a fucking RP is]) of the hotel. The scene shakes cheesily as we hear Scott Syren's laughter echo throughout the whole fucking world.
“THE FUCKING DEMONS OF DEATH?!” Syren booms, highly bemused, his voice rumbling on with a corny-ass reverb effect that is mixed about six notches too wet. The scene cuts back to the hotel room and the vocal audio track returns to normal. Or you can pretend it still has crazy reverb on it, I don't fucking care honestly. Anyway, Syren says: “The Demons of Death?! What are they, in third grade? Or is it that they really expect people to believe that they are literally supernatural creatures of literal darkness who literally kill literal people and literally make them literally dead? Literally? Literal Demons of Literal Death?”
“I doubt it!” snaps Berta. “Once again, it's just a fucking name. Probably. Fuck, I don't know, maybe he does think he's a demon. Everybody else in OCW is fucking insane, why not him too?”
“Oh, what, so you're calling me insane now?”
Berta refuses to answer. He is saved by the bell, except for the bell is actually some knocking on the door, which isn't a bell at all because it's knocking. Syren ducks behind the bed. Berta shakes his head and goes to open the door.
“If that's one of Dean's spies, pretend you don't know me.”
“At this point, I'm about to start pretending not to know you just on principle.” Berta opens the door.
A concerned-looking middle-management hotel employee stands outside the door. Syren peeks up from behind the bed.
“Excuse me, fellas,” says the hotel person. “But the, umm, other member of your party is stuck inside the ice machine.”
Syren stands up. “Stuck inside the ice machine?! What does that even mean?! Literally stuck inside the literal ice machine, literally?”
The hotel guy shuffles his feet nervously. “Yes... he actually crawled inside of it somehow. I know you have a Do Not Disturb sign on your door, and generally I take that very seriously... but he's causing a real problem for thirsty guests... when they try to get ice for their delicious drinks, a bunch of your friend's blood just comes out instead. And it's not even particularly cold blood.”
Syren and Berta do a tandem groan like “ohhhhh maaaaaaaan, not again” and they follow the hotel man out of the room and down the hall. When they reach the ice machine, they can see a bloody, shredded flap of skin hanging out of the chute where the ice is supposed to come down. It looks like it's probably part of a nutsack. Blood and tiny fragments of flesh are splattered across the back of the machine.
From inside the machine, a sound: “Oooooooooowch. Scoot make bad. Scoot make bad.”
Syren turns to the hotel guy. “Thanks, we'll take it from here.”
The hotel man is happy to oblige. He breathes out sharply and scurries back to his office to jerk off to women's underwear ads that are able to slip past the content filtering firewall installed on the hotel's business network.
Syren turns on Berta. “We need to start putting him on the leash again.”
Berta frowns. “I asked him to go get some ice an hour ago. I assumed he could figure out how to push a single fucking button.”
“You can't assume anything with Scoot Time. He can barely masturbate without ending up stuck inside of some machine.”
“Gross.”
“I know.”
Scoot Time hears his pals talking outside of the ice machine and he begins to squeal, “Save Scoot? Save Scoooooot?!” although any sense of vigor in his tiny voice is fading fast.
Syren kneels down and shoves his hand up the ice chute. “Try to flatten your body as much as possible,” Syren yells into the machine. “And limp all of your muscles. This is going to hurt.”
The ice machine whimpers back in response as Syren continues to dig around inside the machine.
“Ugh!” screams Syren, “I think my hand is up his man-cunt!” He takes his hand out of the machine and sniffs his fingers tentatively. “Dammit! There's got to be another way!”
“Hey, what about this handle?” asks Berta. He pulls a handle on the side of the machine, which causes the whole thing to open up very smoothly.
The bloody, half-frozen form of Scoot Time spills out of the ice bin. Scott Syren grabs a towel off of a nearby maid's cart and tosses it on top of the shivering body.
“Don't ever do that again,” advises Syren.
Scoot blinks several times and says, “Don't do what ever again?”
