My life is strange. I'm a seven foot tall blue dragoness, my best friend in the multiverse is an elf with a big floofy tail, I'm trapped on a world where the creator being is obsessed with balls (and also beetles), I have a zombie for a lawyer, a vampire for a doctor, and a fat, skulleted Euro-pop loving Dutchman for an arch nemesis.
It is, however, not so strange that a fellow in a hockey mask, camouflage pants, suit coat, red silken tie, and one of those metal band t-shirts with the band's name beaten into nonrecognition with the ugly stick doesn't cause at least a brow raise.
Of course there's pretty much exactly one person in my life who dresses like that, as if army surplus pantaloons and one of a thousand different black t's with a skull on the front are a uniform as mandatory as the red coat and huge fuzzy hat for the dudes that stand outside Buckingham palace.
So when he tosses a briefcase up on a crate nearby that contains some bit of production gear and whips off the hockey mask, revealing none other than the Patron Saint of Professional Wrestling, Desolation.
The man's amongst the best at what he does. He's had a storied career in ULW and its sister promotion the IWC, and a just as grand career curb stomping the crap out of the indy circuit. He also trained me in the art of professional wrestling.
He pulls off the suit coat and holds it between two fingers, as if it has a bad smell to it, then wads it up and tosses it into a corner. He then proceeds to theatrically brush himself off, as if he had been somehow befouled by the presence of the garment. With that done, then and only then does he grin and greet me.
"So what have you been up to Sally?" he says with a chuckle. Much like Spark and I, he has a tendency to give people ridiculous nicknames. I'm blue, lizard-like, and don't have scales. So obviously I'm a salamander, thus Sally.
"I think you know what I've been up to," I say in reply. "You never call, you never write, but the moment I get a match with a World Heavyweight Champion, here you are, popping out of the woodwork!" I give him my best imitation of the Jewish mother voice Spark is using in my head.
"Yeah, you got me. I figured if you wanted advice you'd ask or call or something. And if you wanted me to be your Doc Louis, you'd have a pink sweat suit and a platter of cheeseburgers for me."
"I can manage my own affairs, and you sir have a notorious tendency to steal the spotlight. He pauses for a moment, looks up and down the hall, and upon seeing a bit of ULW's lighting rig, picks it up and immediately attempts to stick it down his pants. They are not magic pants, so it looks absolutely ridiculous. I just chuckle and shake my head.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"In all seriousness, what brings you here? Especially with the mask, coat, and tie."
"Orlando Cruze, in his dreams." he says, pelvic thrusting with the spotlight on a pole sticking out of his pants, before removing the humorously placed object, waiting a moment, and then letting out a blood-curdling scream before proceeding to tear the tie from around his neck and stomping on it. Repeatedly.
"So apparently despite being a several time World Heavyweight Champion, despite having smacked some sense into Orlando Cruze so hard he dropped his copyright infringing gimmick and three shades of skin tone, despite carrying Baldy on my barn door back, brother, to the best feuds of his career, despite leaving Vinny Ru's jaw dropped onto the floor with the sheer swerviness of aligning with Hurse, despite my dire prophecies on the sheer sucktitude of Alexander Fayt, I'm shockingly not considered a ULW Legend."
I look around for something to sit on. This might be awhile in resolving.
"Despite the boxheaded half of Northland Cheese being my chew toy, despite Too Mag and Jackson Adams being not only my bitches, but my minions during the aforementioned alliance with Hurse! The germ-phobic little shit has even gone so far as to wear an eyepatch because he idolizes me so."
"It's a travesty, and absolute travesty!" he says with a decisive, angry nod.
"Because I never wanted to wear a stupid eyepatch in the first place! He's worshipping a lie! A lie, Coral! Spark is giggling like a madman inside my head as the Dark Man acts out that one Walking Dead meme by hunching down, and then scooting towards me.
"Actually it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I think I was pro-authority figure for all of about five minutes sometime in the mid Aughts. It doesn't surprise me that they're not going to slap me on the back, recognize my accomplishments, and make me a card carrying member of their secret clubhouse." He pulls out his wallet, removing a laminated, elegant looking card with silver leaf, a little seal, an inset plastic window, and several more of those little touches that corporate douchebags pay through the nose for to make their business cards look snazzy.
"This is Kat's, though. ULW Legends are given free reign to wander around live events. They uh… wouldn't let me in because I'm not spotty and sporting boobs, and she's watching the kids." Much like the feline she's been tattooed to resemble, Hellkat popped out a litter of triplets.
Since Desolation has had his eldest daughter, Tia, drawing ULW/IWC wrestlers in not particular flattering comics for years, Spark has decided that Deso's kids are the most experienced graphic designers in ULW. He has them doodling bits of my history as well as the segment dividers.
Apparently some members of the ULW production staff are so mentally deficient they cannot figure out that the all talk bits are promo segments, and the ones where I'm not staring into the camera are the developmentals.
So we have to throw in the dividers, or else the staff ends up confused and air the wrong thing in the wrong spot. As Spark is fond of saying "Instructions unclear, dick caught in ceiling fan."
"So five minutes in the costume truck, which was unlocked and not under surveillance I might add, and I can pass for your attorney." Desolation says with a smirk.
My attorney, R. Joseph Zombie III, is actually another of my trainers, SPIDER, dressed up and pretending to be a zombie. He DOES, however, hold an actual law degree, has passed the bar, and is licensed to practice law in the state of New York. Much to his everlasting shame.
"How they thought a guy in a hockey mask was a zombie, I'll never know. But this company isn't really known for hiring Grade A intellects. They've hired bimbo drag queens, a pair of Irish brothers who were too wrapped up in their cockfighting ring to show up for tapings, and rewarded End Effect's endless bitchery and whining with a main event position. Not since the David Fields peeing into the wind incident has the ULW managed to embarrass itself so direly."
I'm pretty sure that the Donnellys weren't actually running a cockfighting ring, but that's as good an excuse as any. Having been banished to the eternal void of the filler roster and dark matches it's not like they're ever going to get the TV time to publicly refute that.
"You still haven't answered the question." I point out, while all the banter is amusing I have other things to do. Well, no, actually I don't. But sometimes I pretend I do just to move things along. Because YOU people might have something to do.
"Like you said, this is your very first match with a World Heavyweight Champion. Jason King appears to have nestled himself under the leaf-lined wing or Orlando Cruze, and it is a fundamental law of the ULW that the Cruze/Desolation feud shall on occasion wax and wane, but will never die out entirely."
"And since Lord Baldicus has hung up his ridiculous banana hammock, become disillusioned with pro wrestling as a whole, and made some decisions that kinda-sorta resulted in his emotional state being driven right the fuck into the ground, I'm not going to be able to pester Herr Cruze directly."
"Oh sure, I could always come back to active duty on a national stage instead of farting around with my own little promotion, by why the hell would I do that? Right now I get to do all the fun pro wrestling things, wrestling matches, cutting promos, ripping apart poorly constructed gimmicks, take something out of context in a promo that leaves the poor sap in tears of rage or abject misery.What I don't have to do is put up with corporate douchebaggery and abominable bags of suck."
"Well… I do, but I get to be the corporate douchebag and I also get to instruct the abominable bags of suck to start unsucking or they can ship out and join Our Lord and Savior Steve Smith, Ravnos, and End Effect in living in, out of, and generally around a dumpster."
I chuckle. "So because you've trained me and because Planty Planterson has passed his seed…" I wince at that accidently constructed mental image. So does Deso. "Onto Jason King…"
"All over Jason King, I'd presume. Get a blacklight and see where the chlorophyll got spilled."
Eww. Eww. Eww. Eww. EWW! "I, as your disciple…"
"I'd prefer pupil. I wouldn't want to hamstring you by accidently tarnishing you with the unholy taint of Ed Leslie, who is tarnished via his licking of the unholy taint of Hulk Hogan."
"So as your pupil, then, it's up to me to carry on the crusade of annoyance and mockery of Orlando Cruze's legacy viz-a-viz the annoyance and mockery of Jason King?"
Desolation grins, "Exactly!"
"I'm going to have to get in line, though. Bum Chunkface is going to be far, FAR more of an annoyance to Jason than I am."
"Newt Pootman!"
"Droop Softpeck!"
"Redd Rindcheese!"
"Saul Stoolsoftener!"
We pause for a few moments to let the ridiculous nicknames of Raymond der Vaart clear from the air.
"You know, at some point in their lives one in six children will be abducted by the Dutch."
That is a Portal 2 reference, and it sends Spark into mental loop de loops inside my head, as he lacks a floor to roll on.
"And there's also the whole matter of me not really being able to make him particular more miserable. He's got Ray trying to turn the whole company against him, he's got Willow Wilkes, she of the mighty meat curtains, up his ass about something, and his wife's knocked up and suffering from cancer."
The Dark Man winces at that, "Always the dramatic diseases around here. Comas and cancer. Don't drink the water." he looks a little bit sheepish about having crossed a bit of a line. Being annoying is one thing, but picking on a guy with a cancer-ridden wife is low even for him.
"So what kind of cancer?"
"Not sure. I haven't been really paying attention. I don't think it's been revealed. Jess's medical records were stolen via demonic possession."
"And lemme guess, our World Heavyweight Champion isn't genre savvy enough to realize that the supernatural is real and has begun slapping him in the face with its dick.
"He's wrestling a seven foot tall, firebreathing blue dragoness summoned from another world whose blue flames break the laws of physics. I think with Aiken's little circle jerk society the supernatural has moved beyond cock slaps to the face and is now engaged in oral penetration."
"Our conversations always end up producing such lovely mental images, don't they?"
"Hey, they're YOUR metaphors, pal. You don't like the abominations conjured up, don't mention them in the first place."
"True. Anyway, the real reason I came down here was to give you something. Well, not give it to you. More like let you hold onto it for a few days." He opens the clasps on the briefcase and turns it towards me before opening it, revealing the United Livewire Wrestling World Heavyweight Championship.
Not Jason King's ULW WHC belt, the original. The belt that was the peak of ULW in its glory days, when it was the industry leader, rather than slurping up SCW and IWC's table scraps. It's leather, it's gold, it's gemstones, and it's beautiful.
"Due to the signing over all ULW assets and the direct metamorphosis from the company from ULW to IWC, I've never actually lost my status as ULW's Heavyweight Champion of the World. The day of Paranoia when the switchover happened the ULW titles became IWC titles, to be awarded to whomever won the matches as the inaugural holders. You just have to look at the record books to see that I'm not in them as an IWC champ."
"And thus I've held onto it for the last seven, going on eight years now. I think that's why just about anyone with a pulse has been inducted into the ULW Hall of Fame, and I haven't. It's my belief that Ray thinks if he dangles an accolade in front of me, putting it just outside my reach, that I might just get it into my head to come back to ULW in the hopes of cementing my so-called "legacy" as it were."
"In the words of the wise philosopher Tweety Bird, he don't know me very well, do he? I'm not in the Hall of Fame because he wants this thing. He and his backers snapped up the ULW intellectual property, they've managed to all a miniscule handful of ULW veterans back to lend the place a veneer of legitimacy, but at the end of the day?"
"At the end of the day they don't have this. They don't have the direct definitive tie to the old ULW's history. What this is, Kalinda, is a symbol of a bygone era, an era of greatness and this belt is the crown jewel."
"He could drag out the other champions out of mothballs and pick a few of 'em off for easy victories I'm sure. A couple might even leap at the chance for a pay day and to snatch one last dying grasp of fame."
"But me? A year ago we had a little tournament, a tournament where the biggest and brightest from the history of ULW and the IWC came together. And I won. I'm the sole survivor, Kal. I'm the top of the heap when it comes to ULW's old guard." He lifts the belt out of the briefcase, raising it over his head.
"And I am not going some fat, bald, Euro-pop adoring leech cling onto me and try and siphon off my greatness to lend legitimacy to his company. I'm not going to let him goad me into putting this thing on the line. I'm not going to do him that favor."
"But you? Kal, you and I both know if Raymond has his way you're not going to come within spitting distance of his version of this thing. You, I, and Jason all know that the belt ought to be on the line here, that the two of you ought to be headlining this thing instead of Little Miss Meat Curtains and that suckhead from SCW who's done just about fuck all since he's signed on with the place."
"Since he's not going to let you so much as touch his version of the World Heavyweight Championship, I figured I'd give you the chance. To let you see it up close, to feel it, to hold it, to be able to look at yourself in the mirror with it around your waist. It's supposed to be a symbol of pride, Kal, a symbol of accomplishment. And Raymond der Vaart and Cassandra Mason want to make it a yoke, a chain, a collar of obedience to their will, their whims, and their cause."
"I don't want the first title you touch in this industry to be tainted like that. You deserve better. You deserve something honest, something real, something truly pure. Not Mason's fascist ideal of scandal-free purity. I want your first taste of gold, Kal, to be something worthy of you." He reaches out and drapes the belt over my shoulder, and all the blood drains from my face.
"Um, wow. I'm flattered, boss, but uh… you need to take this thing back."
Desolation laughs and shakes his head. "Nope! Yours for the evening! It's not like I need it to hold up my pants or anything. And even if I did, there's another hundred and sixty or so other ones I could use.
"No," I say slowly, gritting my teeth, "You REALLY need to take this thing with you when you leave."
The Dark Man scoffs,"Kal, it's not like Ray's going to jump you for the damned thing the moment I turn my back. I've got some errands to run. If you're so afraid you're going to lose it, just drop it off at the studio once taping for the day's over. See ya later, Sally!" he says, giving a little salute. He then looks over each of my shoulders in turn, giving a little nod.
"Eleanor Rigby, Skeletor. Nice to see you." And then on that maddeningly strange statement he spins on his heels and walks off, whistling the tune of "Paint it Black" rather loudly.
-o-
There's a fellow by the name of Hush who follows me around, a sort of official biographer if you will. A masked man with a magical camera that allows insight into the world of the supernatural that mundane eyes can't see. That even I can't see.
I can reach out and touch the spectral realm, I can choke out ghosts, I can punch demons right in their fat, fanged faces. But I need some way to be able to see what I'm hitting. With New Eden around, we're not taking any chances.
Everywhere I go, Mr. Hush follows with his Cameraviathan, his specially modified and heinously ugly frankenstein's monster of a video camera. It picks up what the eyes cannot see, what the ears do not heat. And as a result it can see why the dark forces bound to me make themselves manifest.
Switching over from the regular camera feed to the altered is obvious. Hush's feed is always slightly distorted around the edges with a sort of fish eye lens effect and faint runes can be seen in parts of the scene, carefully etched onto the surface of the glass.
As a result it can see beyond the mundane. So the moment the classic ULW World Heavyweight Championship touches my body it picks up the discharge of thaumaturgic energy. It also picks up the writhing mass of serpentine coils filling the corridor behind me, the viridian visage looming over one shoulder, and the glowing red eyes and skeletal face hovering just over the other.
The wicked powers that I share my headspace with have decided that we need to have a chat about something. Right the fuck now. They're not pulling punches, they've both expended enough power to not only manifest fully to my senses, but to do so IMMEDIATELY.
I'm not sure what just happened, what the jolt was that went through me when I touched the belt. But if it's something important enough for the two of them to want to talk to me right the fuck now, it's not something good.
I try to get Desolation to take the belt with him, try to shoo him off, try to get the damned thing away from me and the potentially omnicidal powers that have decided that they want to be buddy buddy with me. But he doesn't seem to get the hint that something's wrong.
He leaves me with the item that's triggered some sort of supernatural reaction in me and thankfully he leaves before some harm might befall him. I turn slowly, facing the humanoid cloud that represents the dark artifact known as the Hand of Arimus, and the emerald scaled face of the even darker goddess, the Manyfold Matriarch. Green is her scheming aspect, her corrupting aspect, perhaps her most outright dangerous face.
Heh. Skeletor and Eleanor Rigby. I get it. The skull-faced villain from He-Man and the eponymous Beatles' song containing a lyric that rather accurately sums up the dragon god's demise. Eleanor Rigby; died in a church and was buried along with her name.
"Oh you lucky, lucky little monkeys." the spectral dragoness purrs.
"Gold for fire, silver for water, iron for earth, and leather for life. Combined together into an object that is sought after by warriors, respected and worshipped in a way by millions upon millions of people." The Matriarch is gleeful and happy. I don't like it when she's all cheery and pleasant. Especially when it's not the red read being cheerful, the one she devoured the draconic god of mirth and levity with.
"Child, I do believe that magic-dead minds comprising this little backwater hellhole have actually made something that we can utilize."
"Since you operate under the delusion that the unwashed masses are worthy of continuing to draw breath instead of being harvested for their life force and enslaved to you mind, body, and soul, I do believe that we may have found a source of eldritch power." adds the spectral representation of the Hand.
"Woah, woah, woah! You're saying that the World Heavyweight Championship is a friggin' MANA BATTERY?"
"Mmm, not quite my dear. It is indeed a mana battery, but it is something more. It is akin to one of my godly artifacts. Filled with devotion and worship, filled with the tiniest pieces of the souls of faithful. Shed bits they wouldn't miss, soul dust if you will. Dust in which their is power.
My eyes begin to tear up. "S-so we could use this to get me home?"
"No. Not this. It is the focus of a dead god, left to bleed off its power in the long years since it was cut off from the adoration of the masses. Since the original ULW died. If it were… perhaps, the modern day version it might have the capacity to cast the spell you desire."
"But then again, it might not. I haven't the slightest inkling of how the old and new bastions of gladiatorial combat compare. It might've taken years, dozens of defenses, and a following that cannot be attained in this present day to empower the trophy with which you seek."
"So we can just touch the belt, right? Touch it, draw off the power and go home?"
"Oh precious, precious child. If only it were so easy. In order to drain it of all its power it must be truly yours. It must be a part of your very identity. You cannot merely borrow it and hope to utilize its might for yourself."
"You need not win it. Simply purchasing an object of power will be enough to bring it into your possession."
"I don't have the goatee and the evil laugh to be Ted DiBiase. I'm not going to be able to bribe my way to being World Champion."
"You do, however, have something that Jason King desires, my host. Something that I am sure he would part with his immortal soul to attain."
"What?"
"Healing. Health. Peace of mind. Bereft of magic, healing upon this Earth is crude and often ineffectual. And it's not like you'd miss one of the three dozen Potions of Exquisite Health you keep stored for emergencies."
"No matter the skill of the physicians, chemotherapy and radiation treatments are not pleasant. Tumors that need to be cut out will leave dire wounds. Even if the largest pieces are destroyed, in time the dire masses may return, grown from the most miniscule of seeds."
"You can cure his wife's illness, now and forever. You would assure the healthy birth of their child. The aftereffects of the tincture would assure hale and hardy nature for years afterwards. What husband, what father would not trade something so simple as pride and a scrap of leather and metal for perfect health for his ailing wife? What father would not give anything he had, even his own life, to assure that his child not only survives to be born, but thrives in the dawning years of his life?" The damned skull has a point. I've got a bunch of magical bits and bobs in my coat that could work wonders.
I can save lives. In this case I can save two people with one twelve ounce bottle of thick, red, allegedly fruit-flavored goo. I could save two people and I could go home. That's probably the best use of a single Potion of Exquisite Health that anyone could ever have.
"It's not going to work. It's magic. He doesn't understand magic. He doesn't understand that the moment his eyes turned black it wasn't his buddy in front of him, but some demonic servitor of the Frost clan. He's not going to sell me the World title for magic in a bottle that he's not going to believe in."
"Well then, child, you know what you're going to have to do, don't you?
I nod, my eyes filled with tears at the prospect of being free of this place, of being able to go home. "Yes, Matriarch. I'm going to have to win it from him, aren't I?"
"Such a bright child." she says with a dire chuckle.
Gods above and below, how do I say this in a way you'll understand, Jason? How am I going to convince you of something that's completely and utterly alien to your way of life and point of view?
If you can't understand how your friend was demonically possessed, how he got shoved rudely out of the driver's seat of his own body and got hijacked by an infernal power, and that's why he stole the medical records… if you can't understand that, Jason, how the fuck am I going to get you to understand me? How am I going to get you to understand where I'm coming from?
I live on a fucking donut infinity bajillion miles away. It's not even in this universe. I got here through magic, something this place is amazingly, incredibly unnaturally short on. I got dialed up and I got yanked through a portal created through my realm's own power. This place? There's barely enough ambient fire mana in this room to light a candle.
But you're going to scoff at all that. Scoff at the seven foot tall, fire breathing blue thing with a tail. Scoff because she said the M word, scoff because she said magic. Scoff because of the influence of the supernatural.
And somehow, somehow in this silly backwards little world that's nearly choked off from magical energies, you people have went and managed to make something wonderful. Through happenstance, chance, and a little bit of design, you've managed to make something that could help me get home, give me enough of a boost to break through the barrier between worlds and send me home.
And I'm sorry, Jason, I'm sorry that I've turned out to be a liar. Because it turns out that the powerful magic-gathering artifact that might just have enough juice in it to get me home? You've got it. You won it at ReBirth. The World Heavyweight Championship, a price fought over in dire combat, a prize recognized by millions upon millions of people as an item of power and significance.
And all that belief, Jason? It means something. Every time someone is on the edge of their seat, cheering somebody on, saying to themselves "Come on, you can do it! You can win! I believe in you!" that belief does something. That belief goes somewhere. It takes a little part of their living essence and sends it soaring to the object of contention, towards the prize their favored hero is battling for.
And as it zips along the way across the whole wide world, it gathers a little bit of a charge, a little bit of energy, a little bit of magic. And it ends up right there in the prize worth fighting for, right in the ULW World Heavyweight Championship Title.
Millions of people, Jason. Millions of people watching. Millions of people hoping. Millions of people believing. Untold numbers sending just the tiniest fraction of themselves hoping for victory or cheering for defeat. All that emotion, all that spirit, all that power. It goes right to one place, it suffuses the championship and remains there.
Night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year. It builds up. And some day there's going to be enough raw power suffusing that thing that I can tap into it. That I can use it to get home.
But I can't just touch it and be along my merry way, Jason. I need to have it. It needs to be mine. I can win it from you, I can buy it from you, you can give it to me. I don't know. Some way, any way… I just…
I need it. I don't know if it's enough right now, I don't know if it'll be enough next week or next month or next year.
But Jason, you've got my way home. The only way I can get out of here without causing a whole heck of a lot of damage to the world in order to do so. And you don't know what it's like, you don't know how tempting it is. Just to reach out, to lash out, to rip and tear, to claw and bite, to turn a happy peaceful crowd into a fucking charnel house. Sacrifices to a dark god, their lives ripped away to become raw magical power, their very souls bound into servitude to devour more life force to power my need.
And I'm thankful, Jason, I'm thankful that your world is as ass backwards as it is. Because if the number of people I'd have to kill to power a full blown portal spell didn't number in the four figures, I'd probably have done it by now.
You're just.. so dim. Such dim, dark, empty little souls. You're barely sparks in the darkness, Jason. It's so easy to just dismiss you as barely sentient, as not even people. And that's monstrous. I know that you're living, breathing, thinking people.
And I've got something you'd want, Jason. If only you believed me. If only you'd understand. If only you could see that magic is real and that it can have such powerful effects on the world.
I've brought some of the magic of my world with me, shaped in spells, in items, in potions. I've got the cure for cancer in my coat pocket, Jason, and I can't give it to you. I can't give it to you because I can't fix everybody. I can't make any more. All I have is what I've brought with me, and this place is so devoid and empty of magic that even if I tried for a hundred years I could never make more.
It couldn't ever be reproduced. There's not enough ambient magic around here to infuse the plants used to make the herbs, even if I did have the seeds. I've got the cure for cancer, for sickness, for disease, for aging, for lopped off limbs… I've got it sitting right in my pocket, Jason, and I can't do anything with it.
I'm not a hero, Jason. But I do my damnedest to not be a villain either. I've got thirty six magical bottles that will cure anything that would ever ail anyone, and I can't do anything with them.
Because who am I to decide which thirty six people get to live, while condemning who knows how many others to their otherwise ordained fates? But just one, I keep telling myself, just this one, just this one for Jessica King. She has a baby on the way, and who knows how chemotherapy and radiation is going to affect that kid in the long run.
I could maybe save two lives that way. Save two lives and in exchange you give me the belt, give me my way to get home. And then I don't have to choose for the rest. I don't have to play god and get to pick which dying children get to be healed, and which ones get sent back to their sickbeds to die.
It's so easy and it's so hard.
This is why I'm a crabby, snarky, sarcastic, wisecracking bitch to everybody here. Because I have to live with this, with the potential to save a few dozen people and with the potential to murder thousands.
If I get too compassionate, shit breaks loose.
If I give mercy the bird and decide to let damned Hand of Arimus have its way and instill me as a tyrant over a hoard of the undead, shit breaks loose.
I can't be a hero.
I can't be a villain.
I don't know what the fuck I can do, Jason.
All I want to fucking do is go home, and I can't do that on my own!
I can't save the world.
I can't destroy it either.
So what does that leave me with, Jason?
Where does that leave us?
The champion with the sick wife, and the crazy blue bitch.
You're not going to give up your belt for a cure you don't believe in.
You're not going to just let me win because I have a batshit insane crazy sob story.
So you know what, Jason?
You know what I have to do?
I have to win.
I have to beat you. I have to beat the champion. Because do you know what happens then? Do you know what that makes me?
Not a hero. Not a villain. But the number one contender.
And then, Jason? Then I don't have to go one way or the other. I don't have to save people or damn them to an eternal existence of agony.
I can take the prize from you, Jason.
I can take it on my own, and I will.
Because it's the only way I'm ever going to get home.
And I'm not going to let you stand in the way of that.
[Fade to White]
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