Post by Spartan on Oct 27, 2019 21:52:48 GMT -5
Tristan Cross is rummaging through boxes of unfolded clothes, on the bed behind him is an open suitcase. The room looks as if someone has just moved in as it is far from completely furnished and boxes half opened and unopened litter the floor around the mattress that sits on the floor without a bed frame. Cross is haphazardly pulling clothes on the boxes and tossing them into the open case. When the silence is broken by the opening bars of “My Shot” playing from Cross’ back pocket. He stops doing what he is doing and pulls the cell phone from the back pocket of his black denim shorts. He reads the display:
Cross answers the phone and puts on the phone's speaker function before tossing it on the bed and resumes doing what he is doing.
“Hey, Ma,” Cross yells out with his head half inside a box.
“Hi, Trissy.” the phone answers back.
“Ma! I’m not ten anymore don’t call me that. It’s sickly.” Cross tells the phone off playfully.
“Ok. Tristan.” his mother responds, using his full name because she knows it will annoy him almost as much as the playful nickname. “Your father said you were going to come over for a meal. What are you doing?”
“I’m packing for Russia. I won’t be over anytime soon.”
“What?” the phone yells quizzically.
“I’m packing for Russia, Ma.”
“NO! NO! NO! You can’t pack to bash her.” his mother’s voice gains authority.
“No, What, Ma. I have too.”
“Tristan. You will not go and bash your ex-wife. I am hoping we will get to see our grandchildren this Christmas. You will not ruin that!”
Cross stops doing what he was doing and picks up the phone.
“What did you think I said, Ma?”
“You said were packing bags to go bash her. I thought you were going to go attack, you whore of an ex-wife, Penelope.”
Cross shakes his head in disbelief at what his mother thought she heard through the speaker of the phone. He smirked to himself, realizing there is a funny side to it.
“No, Ma. I am packing for Russia. I have a job to do over there.”
“Boogeyman!” Missus Angelica Cross shouts down the phone.
Despite wrestling not being a pastime or interest of Tristan Cross in his youth. His mother is an entirely different story. She grew up on watching a steady diet of wrestling show throughout her youth and throughout all the years of her marriage. She could never get her only son interested in it when he was young. So she was ecstatic when she found out he had signed a contract. She has yet to miss a match and have recorded every match he has wrestled so far.
“What, Ma?”
“I remember, Tristan. You’re going to Russia to defend your North American Title against the Super Sexy Boogeyman Slayer.”
“Yeh, Ma, I know. I’m wrestling in the match.”
“Well, ya better do more than that. Osbourne ain’t no Anderson or Road Dawg. Turning up and relying on your physical gifts to beat him; you need to be smart too.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
“Tristan!” she shouts down the phone. “Your father knows basketball, and I know wrestling. So you can stop and listen to your mother for a little bit.
Cross looks at the phone, obviously taken aback by the forthright tone of his mother on the other end of the phone. He briefly considered hanging up, but didn’t think it would be worth it; knowing his mother, she would jump on the plane find him in Chernobyl if he hung up now.
“Yes, Ma. I’m listening.”
“You’re on a roll, Son. But you can’t discount, Osbourne. He is already a two-time champion.”
“So am I.”
“Shoosh. I’m talking. You’re listening. I was saying is a former two-time Junior Heavyweight Champion. So he knows how to win when it counts. So he could beat you if you are not mentally prepared. You’re huge, physically, Tristan. So you won’t need Chernobyl’s radiation to turn into the Hulk.”
“Nice line, Ma,” says Cross laughing.
“I know. But, being the Hulk won’t always be enough. I mean if you look around the world you’ve got a Meth Head as a figurehead in one doorway and a silly girl with no much of an idea of reality in another doorway. Then a scrawny little gigolo can knock you down and take your title. So you’ve got to be more than the Hulk, son.”
Cross shakes his head listening to advice on how to be successful from his Mother. Jerry Eisenhower has recently told him that he lacks a killer instinct and now, his flesh and blood is telling him he needs to be more to be successful.
“Yes.”
“No. I’m serious. Look at it this way, this environment that the Russian woman Irina Iriwhatever has made for this event - it evens the playing field and Osbourne likes to cheat so that even the playing field even more. You need to be more than Hulk.
“I know. I heard you. I am going to keep this title.”
“That’s what you said when you fought Dean Wolf at Ascension and we know what happened there.”
“Ma. Wolf is a hardcore machine.”
“And Osbourne has won just as many titles and you and Wolf so you have to consider that he could beat you.”
“Ok, Ma. He could beat me,” says Tristan Cross sighing with frustration at his Mother.
“Oh. Jeez. Don’t be so melodramatic.” she answers tersely hearing the frustration in his voice. “All things being equal you will overcome him, Tristan. But things aren’t always equal, Son. I am just telling you that. You’ve had a strong run, sometimes people get complacent when they win. I am telling you to watch out for that.”
Cross can never win with his mother. She is the most opinionated and stubborn person he knows. He understands why his father has spent so much time in the gymnasium coaching and the video room watching tape. He just wants peace, just as Tristan wants some peace from her right now so he can finish packing and get on that plane to Russia.
“What you suggest, Ma?” with a tone that suggests he wants to get off the phone.
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
A mother always knows.
“Take a cheese grater to his nuts.” Angelica Cross laughs over the cellphone’s speaker.
“What?”
“Take a cheese grater to his nuts, Tristan. Shave his pubic hair right off his ballsack, son.”
“Ma. Come On!”
“Just listen to your mother.”
“Ok, Ma. I gotta go. Love you.” says Cross in an obvious effort to get his Mother off the phone.
“Love you, Son,” she responds - the tone of her voice knowing what her son is trying to do to her right now.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Cross drops the phone on the mattress; just another conversation with my mother, he thinks to himself while shaking his head in disbelief. He returns to what he was doing before she sidetracked him with her pearls of wisdom - packing for Russia.
“Have you ever?”
Spartan sits on the number five diving block of the abandoned Azure Swimming Pool in Pripyat, Ukraine. He is wearing a pair of black sweat pants and a blood hoodie. The hood is pulled up over his head, hiding his face to some degree, yet nothing can hide the world’s most glorious ginger beard from the limelight. He swings his legs gently he talks.
“Truthfully, it’s not a face I should use when addressing you, should I, Osbourne? With your mind, you can take it and twist in a thousand different ways and a thousand different meanings that no father would ever want related to their daughter.”
“So, Steven, have you ever?”
“Have you ever just sat and thought about what your actions will do others?”
“Have you ever thought about the consequences?”
“Have you ever considered the reaction to your action?”
“I don’t think those workers in Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor number four ever thought about what could happen when they turned up to work on the Twenty-Sixth of April, Nineteen Eighty-Six. They were just turning up to do their job, doing their time to return home to what they love. Little did they know that before the day would end, their whole world would change.”
“Which begs the question. Have you ever thought about what will happen when you step into the ring with me?”
Spartan vaults himself down from the edge of the pool into the debris of the abandoned facility at the bottom of the once-grand pool. Spartan lands in a crouch and then stands to his feet. He walks the pool as he talks.
“Have you ever considered the damage that can be inflicted upon your frame when you lock yourself into combat with me? Have you ever considered what will happen to your ligaments and tendons when I catch you? Have you ever considered what will happen when all your chicanery, shenanigans and whatever tomfoolery you unleash amounts to naught against me?.”
He slowly pulls himself up the steep incline from the diving end to the shallow end. About halfway up the incline he stops, turns and sits facing down the slope.
“Have you ever thought about what coming to fight in the ruins of Pripyat would do to you, Boogeyman Slayer? Will they move you, will they shake you, will they just allow you another canvas to harvest women from? Have you considered what would happen if a rabid father catches you in Ukraine? Have you ever thought that bedding the wrong girl here, in this former Soviet Republic will be worse than being brainwashed by a twisted minister.”
“Have you ever considered that difference?”
“Have you ever considered the increase in difficulty from stepping into the ring with Jaice Wilds and defending Junior Heavyweight Title, to stepping between the ropes with me, and fighting for the North American Title. In this instance, let me tell you, it’s like climbing up a hill of quicksand. You may have overlooked Jaice last week with an eye on this week - I don’t know. I don’t know when the Red Scourge told you that you had earned a North American Title shot. What I do know, is that every week since I won this title - I have walked out to dare someone to challenge me. And not one person ever took the opportunity.”
“Not even you.”
“When you were busy preparing to lose the Junior Heavyweight Title to The Final General. I was pacing, circling, praying for a challenger to step forward. What did I get?”
“Nothing.”
“So while you have been given this shot - you most likely had your name drawn out of a hat, maybe the roll of the dice - may be some other system of random picking a lucky loser for me to defend this title against.”
“But you aren’t lucky, Osbourne. Far from it. This piece of luck is going to lead to your unluckiest visit to Mother Russia.”
“Have you ever considered that?”
“Stepping into the ring with me is no stepping into the ring with Jackson Thomas. It’s no Lucy Sixx, third time lucky. It’s no dance with Tsukiko. It’s no battle with Jaice Wilds. Stepping into the ring with me - it's far bigger than all of them. Especially, when you consider that I will be defending my North American Title against you. Have you considered how much this title means to me?”
“If you haven’t then you really should.”
Spartan shuffles around on the spot where he sits.
“See, when I first knew I was facing Road Dawg after putting down Allen Anderson at Jubeilation. I watched him. I saw what he did. I saw how he treated this belt as if it were nothing but a trinket to be left on a forgotten shelf to gather dust. I saw all that.”
“It pissed me off. I was disrespectful.”
“So I made it mission to dethrone Road Dawg and carry the title with pride. Sure, I don’t have around my waist here in this meandering wasteland that was once Lazúrnyj. But it’s safe and I can assure, Osbourne, that it will be around my waist, front and center when you watch me walk to the ring at HorrorKore. And it will be around my waist again when I am walking out of Avanhard Stadium, victorious. While you will be lying on the canvas, trying to clear the stars in your eyes after feeling the full effects of the Revolutionizer.”
“Don’t get me wrong here, Steven. I’m not saying you can’t beat me.”
“I’m saying I won’t let you beat me.”
“There is a reason I am one half of the wrestling’s clear match of the year. And everyone saw what it took to take the Hardcore Title from my grasp. Now that I have the North American Title in my possession, I am not letting it slip.”
“No chance in Hell.”
“Sorry. Osbourne.”
“But I like being a Champion. And you just happen to be you in the ring this Halloween.”
Spartan pushes himself up and twists and continues walking towards the shallow end of the pool. He stops and looks down at the other end of the pool.
“We all have our hills to climb, Osbourne. Just at HorrorKore, the hill you want to climb will be just a little bit too high, and just a little bit too challenging for you to get to where you want to be. And the King at the top of your mountain is not willing to give up his throne, not just yet. Even as they bring in different challenges to try and even the playing field for you, your lucky door prize title shot has become unlucky.”
Spartan places his hands on the end of the pool and pushes up to drag him frame out of the empty vassal. He turns and sits back down on the edge.
“Steve, it’s all about climbing to the top, even the anarchists like Z-Mac want to be on top of the pile, the bones of those they waylaid on their way to the top - rubble at their feet. It’s why the stipulations of this match are rather poetic.”
“How? Well consider this, the ladder is what you use to start your ascension. Your rise from a mere Junior Heavyweight to the globe-trotting North American Champion. The chair is the weapon of the one-man oligarchy seeking to prevent your rise from the mud. The table is the rubble in which you lie after you have been categorically vanquished by the man you tried to ascend beyond.”
“I know you’re smart enough to take an analogy from the metaphors laid out in front of you, Osbourne that I am not going to explain in minutiae. There is no need. Battles are won and lost when they get mired in detail. There is no need for detail when I step into the ring with at HorrorKore.”
“None.”
“I’m not going to lie, Osbourne. I’m a soldier. I’m not a general. I don’t look for the detail when it comes to winning the battle.”
“I just win the battle.”
“Regardless of my enemy.”
“Why an enemy? Why not an opponent? We’re not playing chess, Mr. Osbourne.”
“This is physical combat.”
“This is a Championship Match.”
“And I am taking no prisoners.”
“I will keep coming at you. Second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour.”
“Every time you come at me - I will knock you down. Every time you get up - I will knock you down. Again and again and again. And if it takes as much - I will put you down like an old diseased dog, if I must - to keep my fiefdom safe.”
“I am the North American Champion, Steven. I am said champion for a reason and I will not allow you to change that. Not by hook and certainly not by crook. This match at HorrorKore, for all your talent, for all your ability, for all your guile and all your cunning, Osbourne. This match will be the most one-sided conflict since the Zanzibar Sultanate declared war on the British Empire.”
Spartan wipes his hand down over his face.
“And that’s not because you’re hopelessly outmatched in gladiatorial combat with me. It’s not because you lack the firepower to compete in a straight-up fistfight with me."
"Truth is, You are outmatched so astronomically when it comes down to it. You do lack the firepower to stand toe to toe with me. But you have other advantages that I will not allow you to use against me. No way. No how. Hell, not even by the wildest child’s imagination. Not because I hate you, but simply because I am not going to let you take the title from me.”
“That much I know.”
“Have I considered that you can beat me?”
“Yes.”
“Have I entertained the thought of you riding the fabled Alpha Pro bounce back to victory?”
“Yes.”
“Have I considered that I may be underestimating you, Osbourne?”
“Yes.”
Spartan flips the hood off his head to reveal his face and his head of ginger hair.
“But - none of that matters.”
“Why?”
Spartan strokes his ginger beard.
“I am just not going to allow you to win.”
“Have you considered that?”
Spartan pulls the hood back over his head, stands and walks away from the pool. He climbs out the glassless window panes and away from the abandoned and decayed complex, leaving it as silent and alone as it was before he arrived.
Mother
Cross answers the phone and puts on the phone's speaker function before tossing it on the bed and resumes doing what he is doing.
“Hey, Ma,” Cross yells out with his head half inside a box.
“Hi, Trissy.” the phone answers back.
“Ma! I’m not ten anymore don’t call me that. It’s sickly.” Cross tells the phone off playfully.
“Ok. Tristan.” his mother responds, using his full name because she knows it will annoy him almost as much as the playful nickname. “Your father said you were going to come over for a meal. What are you doing?”
“I’m packing for Russia. I won’t be over anytime soon.”
“What?” the phone yells quizzically.
“I’m packing for Russia, Ma.”
“NO! NO! NO! You can’t pack to bash her.” his mother’s voice gains authority.
“No, What, Ma. I have too.”
“Tristan. You will not go and bash your ex-wife. I am hoping we will get to see our grandchildren this Christmas. You will not ruin that!”
Cross stops doing what he was doing and picks up the phone.
“What did you think I said, Ma?”
“You said were packing bags to go bash her. I thought you were going to go attack, you whore of an ex-wife, Penelope.”
Cross shakes his head in disbelief at what his mother thought she heard through the speaker of the phone. He smirked to himself, realizing there is a funny side to it.
“No, Ma. I am packing for Russia. I have a job to do over there.”
“Boogeyman!” Missus Angelica Cross shouts down the phone.
Despite wrestling not being a pastime or interest of Tristan Cross in his youth. His mother is an entirely different story. She grew up on watching a steady diet of wrestling show throughout her youth and throughout all the years of her marriage. She could never get her only son interested in it when he was young. So she was ecstatic when she found out he had signed a contract. She has yet to miss a match and have recorded every match he has wrestled so far.
“What, Ma?”
“I remember, Tristan. You’re going to Russia to defend your North American Title against the Super Sexy Boogeyman Slayer.”
“Yeh, Ma, I know. I’m wrestling in the match.”
“Well, ya better do more than that. Osbourne ain’t no Anderson or Road Dawg. Turning up and relying on your physical gifts to beat him; you need to be smart too.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
“Tristan!” she shouts down the phone. “Your father knows basketball, and I know wrestling. So you can stop and listen to your mother for a little bit.
Cross looks at the phone, obviously taken aback by the forthright tone of his mother on the other end of the phone. He briefly considered hanging up, but didn’t think it would be worth it; knowing his mother, she would jump on the plane find him in Chernobyl if he hung up now.
“Yes, Ma. I’m listening.”
“You’re on a roll, Son. But you can’t discount, Osbourne. He is already a two-time champion.”
“So am I.”
“Shoosh. I’m talking. You’re listening. I was saying is a former two-time Junior Heavyweight Champion. So he knows how to win when it counts. So he could beat you if you are not mentally prepared. You’re huge, physically, Tristan. So you won’t need Chernobyl’s radiation to turn into the Hulk.”
“Nice line, Ma,” says Cross laughing.
“I know. But, being the Hulk won’t always be enough. I mean if you look around the world you’ve got a Meth Head as a figurehead in one doorway and a silly girl with no much of an idea of reality in another doorway. Then a scrawny little gigolo can knock you down and take your title. So you’ve got to be more than the Hulk, son.”
Cross shakes his head listening to advice on how to be successful from his Mother. Jerry Eisenhower has recently told him that he lacks a killer instinct and now, his flesh and blood is telling him he needs to be more to be successful.
“Yes.”
“No. I’m serious. Look at it this way, this environment that the Russian woman Irina Iriwhatever has made for this event - it evens the playing field and Osbourne likes to cheat so that even the playing field even more. You need to be more than Hulk.
“I know. I heard you. I am going to keep this title.”
“That’s what you said when you fought Dean Wolf at Ascension and we know what happened there.”
“Ma. Wolf is a hardcore machine.”
“And Osbourne has won just as many titles and you and Wolf so you have to consider that he could beat you.”
“Ok, Ma. He could beat me,” says Tristan Cross sighing with frustration at his Mother.
“Oh. Jeez. Don’t be so melodramatic.” she answers tersely hearing the frustration in his voice. “All things being equal you will overcome him, Tristan. But things aren’t always equal, Son. I am just telling you that. You’ve had a strong run, sometimes people get complacent when they win. I am telling you to watch out for that.”
Cross can never win with his mother. She is the most opinionated and stubborn person he knows. He understands why his father has spent so much time in the gymnasium coaching and the video room watching tape. He just wants peace, just as Tristan wants some peace from her right now so he can finish packing and get on that plane to Russia.
“What you suggest, Ma?” with a tone that suggests he wants to get off the phone.
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
A mother always knows.
“Take a cheese grater to his nuts.” Angelica Cross laughs over the cellphone’s speaker.
“What?”
“Take a cheese grater to his nuts, Tristan. Shave his pubic hair right off his ballsack, son.”
“Ma. Come On!”
“Just listen to your mother.”
“Ok, Ma. I gotta go. Love you.” says Cross in an obvious effort to get his Mother off the phone.
“Love you, Son,” she responds - the tone of her voice knowing what her son is trying to do to her right now.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Cross drops the phone on the mattress; just another conversation with my mother, he thinks to himself while shaking his head in disbelief. He returns to what he was doing before she sidetracked him with her pearls of wisdom - packing for Russia.
“Have you ever?”
Spartan sits on the number five diving block of the abandoned Azure Swimming Pool in Pripyat, Ukraine. He is wearing a pair of black sweat pants and a blood hoodie. The hood is pulled up over his head, hiding his face to some degree, yet nothing can hide the world’s most glorious ginger beard from the limelight. He swings his legs gently he talks.
“Truthfully, it’s not a face I should use when addressing you, should I, Osbourne? With your mind, you can take it and twist in a thousand different ways and a thousand different meanings that no father would ever want related to their daughter.”
“So, Steven, have you ever?”
“Have you ever just sat and thought about what your actions will do others?”
“Have you ever thought about the consequences?”
“Have you ever considered the reaction to your action?”
“I don’t think those workers in Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor number four ever thought about what could happen when they turned up to work on the Twenty-Sixth of April, Nineteen Eighty-Six. They were just turning up to do their job, doing their time to return home to what they love. Little did they know that before the day would end, their whole world would change.”
“Which begs the question. Have you ever thought about what will happen when you step into the ring with me?”
Spartan vaults himself down from the edge of the pool into the debris of the abandoned facility at the bottom of the once-grand pool. Spartan lands in a crouch and then stands to his feet. He walks the pool as he talks.
“Have you ever considered the damage that can be inflicted upon your frame when you lock yourself into combat with me? Have you ever considered what will happen to your ligaments and tendons when I catch you? Have you ever considered what will happen when all your chicanery, shenanigans and whatever tomfoolery you unleash amounts to naught against me?.”
He slowly pulls himself up the steep incline from the diving end to the shallow end. About halfway up the incline he stops, turns and sits facing down the slope.
“Have you ever thought about what coming to fight in the ruins of Pripyat would do to you, Boogeyman Slayer? Will they move you, will they shake you, will they just allow you another canvas to harvest women from? Have you considered what would happen if a rabid father catches you in Ukraine? Have you ever thought that bedding the wrong girl here, in this former Soviet Republic will be worse than being brainwashed by a twisted minister.”
“Have you ever considered that difference?”
“Have you ever considered the increase in difficulty from stepping into the ring with Jaice Wilds and defending Junior Heavyweight Title, to stepping between the ropes with me, and fighting for the North American Title. In this instance, let me tell you, it’s like climbing up a hill of quicksand. You may have overlooked Jaice last week with an eye on this week - I don’t know. I don’t know when the Red Scourge told you that you had earned a North American Title shot. What I do know, is that every week since I won this title - I have walked out to dare someone to challenge me. And not one person ever took the opportunity.”
“Not even you.”
“When you were busy preparing to lose the Junior Heavyweight Title to The Final General. I was pacing, circling, praying for a challenger to step forward. What did I get?”
“Nothing.”
“So while you have been given this shot - you most likely had your name drawn out of a hat, maybe the roll of the dice - may be some other system of random picking a lucky loser for me to defend this title against.”
“But you aren’t lucky, Osbourne. Far from it. This piece of luck is going to lead to your unluckiest visit to Mother Russia.”
“Have you ever considered that?”
“Stepping into the ring with me is no stepping into the ring with Jackson Thomas. It’s no Lucy Sixx, third time lucky. It’s no dance with Tsukiko. It’s no battle with Jaice Wilds. Stepping into the ring with me - it's far bigger than all of them. Especially, when you consider that I will be defending my North American Title against you. Have you considered how much this title means to me?”
“If you haven’t then you really should.”
Spartan shuffles around on the spot where he sits.
“See, when I first knew I was facing Road Dawg after putting down Allen Anderson at Jubeilation. I watched him. I saw what he did. I saw how he treated this belt as if it were nothing but a trinket to be left on a forgotten shelf to gather dust. I saw all that.”
“It pissed me off. I was disrespectful.”
“So I made it mission to dethrone Road Dawg and carry the title with pride. Sure, I don’t have around my waist here in this meandering wasteland that was once Lazúrnyj. But it’s safe and I can assure, Osbourne, that it will be around my waist, front and center when you watch me walk to the ring at HorrorKore. And it will be around my waist again when I am walking out of Avanhard Stadium, victorious. While you will be lying on the canvas, trying to clear the stars in your eyes after feeling the full effects of the Revolutionizer.”
“Don’t get me wrong here, Steven. I’m not saying you can’t beat me.”
“I’m saying I won’t let you beat me.”
“There is a reason I am one half of the wrestling’s clear match of the year. And everyone saw what it took to take the Hardcore Title from my grasp. Now that I have the North American Title in my possession, I am not letting it slip.”
“No chance in Hell.”
“Sorry. Osbourne.”
“But I like being a Champion. And you just happen to be you in the ring this Halloween.”
Spartan pushes himself up and twists and continues walking towards the shallow end of the pool. He stops and looks down at the other end of the pool.
“We all have our hills to climb, Osbourne. Just at HorrorKore, the hill you want to climb will be just a little bit too high, and just a little bit too challenging for you to get to where you want to be. And the King at the top of your mountain is not willing to give up his throne, not just yet. Even as they bring in different challenges to try and even the playing field for you, your lucky door prize title shot has become unlucky.”
Spartan places his hands on the end of the pool and pushes up to drag him frame out of the empty vassal. He turns and sits back down on the edge.
“Steve, it’s all about climbing to the top, even the anarchists like Z-Mac want to be on top of the pile, the bones of those they waylaid on their way to the top - rubble at their feet. It’s why the stipulations of this match are rather poetic.”
“How? Well consider this, the ladder is what you use to start your ascension. Your rise from a mere Junior Heavyweight to the globe-trotting North American Champion. The chair is the weapon of the one-man oligarchy seeking to prevent your rise from the mud. The table is the rubble in which you lie after you have been categorically vanquished by the man you tried to ascend beyond.”
“I know you’re smart enough to take an analogy from the metaphors laid out in front of you, Osbourne that I am not going to explain in minutiae. There is no need. Battles are won and lost when they get mired in detail. There is no need for detail when I step into the ring with at HorrorKore.”
“None.”
“I’m not going to lie, Osbourne. I’m a soldier. I’m not a general. I don’t look for the detail when it comes to winning the battle.”
“I just win the battle.”
“Regardless of my enemy.”
“Why an enemy? Why not an opponent? We’re not playing chess, Mr. Osbourne.”
“This is physical combat.”
“This is a Championship Match.”
“And I am taking no prisoners.”
“I will keep coming at you. Second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour.”
“Every time you come at me - I will knock you down. Every time you get up - I will knock you down. Again and again and again. And if it takes as much - I will put you down like an old diseased dog, if I must - to keep my fiefdom safe.”
“I am the North American Champion, Steven. I am said champion for a reason and I will not allow you to change that. Not by hook and certainly not by crook. This match at HorrorKore, for all your talent, for all your ability, for all your guile and all your cunning, Osbourne. This match will be the most one-sided conflict since the Zanzibar Sultanate declared war on the British Empire.”
Spartan wipes his hand down over his face.
“And that’s not because you’re hopelessly outmatched in gladiatorial combat with me. It’s not because you lack the firepower to compete in a straight-up fistfight with me."
"Truth is, You are outmatched so astronomically when it comes down to it. You do lack the firepower to stand toe to toe with me. But you have other advantages that I will not allow you to use against me. No way. No how. Hell, not even by the wildest child’s imagination. Not because I hate you, but simply because I am not going to let you take the title from me.”
“That much I know.”
“Have I considered that you can beat me?”
“Yes.”
“Have I entertained the thought of you riding the fabled Alpha Pro bounce back to victory?”
“Yes.”
“Have I considered that I may be underestimating you, Osbourne?”
“Yes.”
Spartan flips the hood off his head to reveal his face and his head of ginger hair.
“But - none of that matters.”
“Why?”
Spartan strokes his ginger beard.
“I am just not going to allow you to win.”
“Have you considered that?”
Spartan pulls the hood back over his head, stands and walks away from the pool. He climbs out the glassless window panes and away from the abandoned and decayed complex, leaving it as silent and alone as it was before he arrived.
