Fuck you, Josh Kennedy.
Fuck you, Eddy Poe.
And fuck you, Masatake Kawamata.
Fuck all of you.
Fuck you with a cactus.
Fuck you like it's a chore.
But fuck Kennedy in particular.
Because you haven't been paying attention at all.
You'd have to be living in a cave in the middle of the remote American wilderness with a bag on your head, plugs in your ears, and your head up your ass to not have heard literally ANYTHING about me.
"Blah blah blah, Kalinda, you sit on the throne of DTW surrounded by everything you've ever wanted!"
And you're sitting on a motherfucking throne of lies, Kennedy.
Because yeah, Josh, I so totally wanted to be a fucking pariah. I wanted to be ignored by every professional wrestling company on the planet, bar one.
I wanted to go hat in hand to wrestling federations to ask for places for me, my friends, and my family only to have their offers be lies. The rules laid out in the contracts I signed going unenforced. To be treated like shit day in and day out because I'm different. Because I have a tail. Because I'm a woman. Because of the color of my skin.
Oh boy, Josh! Do I ever love being the victim of racism! It's so much fun to be called a bligger, a blueback, a lizard, a monster, and an animal. It's oh so delightful to have your own fucking employer put a bounty out on you. It's so very delightful to have the people in charge of a company do nothing when people interfere in your matches again and again and again and again.
What's this? You have a gift for me! Squeeeeeee! It's exactly what I always wanted! To be treated like some sort of subhuman abomination, and it's precisely my size too!
I totally wanted to have all the levity and joy ground out of me in the span of three years in the professional wrestling industry, going from a happy, bouncy dragongirl to an angry, bitter, cynical wreck.
My fondest wish was to have my hand bitten every time I reached out of the one and only friendly, supportive work environment I've ever had. I was so filled with joy when I completely gave up on the world of professional wrestling outside of DTW and decided that this company, the only one that had ever treated me fairly, was the only one I would ever have.
The back of my head just about hit the backs of my heels as I was in the orgasmic throes of pleasure as I decided that what I have here in DTW was the best things were ever going to get for me.
And I was right.
The night where I decided to dedicate my life to this federation was the peak of my career here in DTW. Because people have decided that they want to make me regret my decision. You expect people to talk shit about you in the wrestling business, but usually they're your opponents. Sometimes one member of the commentary team gets a bug up their ass and decides to hate on you.
But when someone you consider a friend decides to start assuming the worst of you? That fucking hurts. Especially when you literally dragged their spiritual ass back into their body and bitchslapped the Grim Reaper on their behalf.
Kawamata, I dived into the Great Beyond with my motherfucking soul on the line in order to fish you out. If I'd have fucked up, I would have been dead right alongside you.
And you remember what happens when I die, right? Because of a really fucking vague prayer I gave not thinking anyone was listening I have a goddess-damned cannibalistic multiheaded dragon goddess living in my head that is going to devour my entire being whole, erase everything that I was in life, and use whatever is left to make a vaguely Kalinda-flavored spin-off of herself.
Just like she did for her pantheon.
Just like she did for her species.
And you idiots think I'm fucking afraid of losing a match?
Fuck you all. You want this match that badly? Take it. Give me the word and I will hurl myself from the top of that cage onto burning fucking barbed wire. You don't even need to ask Claudia. She'll fling herself off of anything high onto anything burning and/or pointy at the drop of a hat. She's drawn herself a target on Skull Island and has been trying to help my daughter master the ins and outs of Flight spells and Telekinesis by jumping off A Zeppelin Called Trouble. Delilah? She's just here because she wants to spend time with me and quite honestly would rather be in her workshop tinkering, but she does the wrestling thing because I do the wrestling thing. She'd be thrilled to stay in her workshop and tinker.
I'm not afraid of losing.
I'm afraid of DTW becoming a laughingstock, a shithole, a poorly booked mess.
I'm pointing out a flaw in the design of the match. It's a 30-minute time limit, so all you have to do to not lose is not climb up the rope to the top of the cage. Imagine I'm not me for a moment. Imagine that I'm not the selfless lady that risked her life and her afterlife for somebody she'd only known for three months. Imagine that I'm some conniving, scumbag egomaniacal asshole that only cares about themselves.
The fans want to see winners and losers. They want to see motherfuckers being flung off the top of that cage. Wrestling fans hate count outs, they hate disqualifications, they hate time limit draws.
But they're willing to tolerate draws when they get good wrestling. I've engineered draws before. During the Carnage Carnival, I took advantage of the 30-minute time limit to beat the complete and utter fuck out of Riddick to ruin his chances of winning the whole thing, and I succeeded. The fans loved every minute of it.
Just like when I fought Kawamata to a draw earlier in the tournament. I didn't want to win the Carnage Carnival. I wanted somebody to rise up, to show they were worthy of competing for my championship.
And of the lot I wanted to see my friend, Toasty Beloved Fragile Mascot-Chan, win those honors. And he did. Because of me. Because I wanted to give him 30 minutes to show the fans what he could do against me. I wanted to give them a taste of what was to come. I wanted them to leave Night 1 wanting more.
If it wasn't for me giving Kawamata those thirty minutes, he never would have won the group stage. Without that point, Deveraux would've won the bracket with the tiebreaker due to the pin he got on me due to his useless clown brother. Because the whole point of the silly thing was to find me a worthy competitor. If I'd won the group stage I'd have accomplished what I was trying to avoid in the first place.
How much different would Night 12 have been if instead of the fans getting to see which of Masatake Kawamata and Abiogenesis Zucchini would go on to face me for the DTW World Championship, it was instead Abba Dabba Dabba Zootsuit's uphill battle to try and earn a title shot against me?
There's so much less drama there, less excitement. Arthur Zamboni's reward for winning would have been a trophy, a few words stuck next to his name, and being told "Great, now do it again."
And if I won?
Disaster.
I'd have to pick my own opponent, AGAIN.
Which means people would be pissing and moaning, AGAIN.
No matter who I picked there would be people disappointed, AGAIN.
And there would be so much whining and crying and threats from the usual assortment of whistling, gaping assholes trying to bait me into fighting them with their petty threats and their insinuations that I didn't pick them because I was afraid of them.
AGAIN.
I'm not an idiot.
I'm not a coward.
I'm not some kind of fan-hating, fun-loathing, buzz-killing colossal hooting dickhole.
Please stop attempting to treat me like I am. Not for my sake, but for yours.
Let's add yet another bulleted item to the list of "Everything I Ever Wanted," I so totally wanted everybody to completely and utterly assume the worst of me every time I open my goddamned mouth.
Here I am, pointing out that there is a hole in DTW's roof that water, or birds, or feces from Teiji Shintaro who just so happened to confuse for one of those Japanese porcelain hole-in-the-ground toilets and decided to poop in it.
Well, actually, probably not the last one. I've never heard of Teiji actually shitting in a toilet before.
Anyway, there's a hole in DTW's roof, and I'm warning the folks in charge that there's something wrong with the roof.
And the Filth Parade? They're sitting on the front steps sniffing their fingers and going "Ooooh! Kalinda's pointing out that there's a hole in the roof! She's afraid of a little rain! The poor widdle water dragon's scared of water!"
I'm a motherfucking water dragon who rises out of a pool of water every single DTW show as part of her entrance. Anybody with two brain cells to scrape together knows that I'm not afraid of water.
Saying obvious falsehoods like this doesn't make me look bad, Josh, Eddy, Masatake.
It makes YOU look bad. It makes you look like an ass. Not merely an ass, but an ass that will be immortalized in song to the tune of "Kokomo."
Repugnant
Mendacious
Dilated anus!
There are three directions you can go for a good, entertaining insult. It has to be funny, it has to be ridiculous, or it has to be true.
A funny insult doesn't have to be outright comedic, it can just be interesting, weird, or fun to say. Like "Eddy Poe is a colossal hooting dickhole," or "Masatake Kawamata is a douchecanoe."
Something ridiculous can be just something goofy or so out there that there is no way it could be true. Like "Eddy Poe is not allowed to wrestle in the state of Wyoming due him being banned from all the states adjacent to the Dakotas due to his history of cattle sodomy," or "Josh Kennedy's an alt-med whacko whose preferred treatment for open wounds is to inject a mixture of his own urine and dissolved pellets made from his own concentrated flatulence."
I really like these, because you can build on them for comedic effect. Like I could go on to describe the bean and pickled egg-centric diet that Kennedy supposedly undertakes. His tailored fart-collection suit that he wears while working out so that not a single toot is wasted. The barking spider sucker he made out of a dustbuster that he carries around while he's at home. Or the Cone of Silence from Get Smart-esque plastic device that he lowers over his bed at night so that not a single nocturnal emission goes to waste.
Just the very image of Josh Kennedy collecting his own exhaust fumes is enough to give somebody the giggles. Like earlier when I said that my Filth Parade opponents were sitting around on the front stoop sniffing their fingers.
It's something they'd never do, but yet it seems comically plausible somehow. You can just picture them like a bunch of teenagers in a wannabe gang sitting on somebody's front steps in their leather jackets smelling the accumulate stink on their fingers. Because not washing your hands and getting pink eye is punk as all hell.
And for the truth? Well, it doesn't have to be the truth, but it has to be believable. Sometimes I say things purely for comedic effect that turn out to be true. Like last month when I said Erik Holland has a black studded leather beanbag sofa stuffed with stale popcorn. I dunno about the stale popcorn, but guess what?
It turns out that he actually DOES own a black studded leather beanbag sofa.
You can also take something real and exaggerate it.
For example just how… ah… "weathered" Kawamata's skin is, so I said that after his being set on fire I didn't have anything to use for skin grafts, so I used the rich corinthian leather from Dick Deveraux's Compensationmobile.
It's stuff like calling out Riddick on his being offensive for offense's sake, the way he does everything for the sake of making people pay attention to him. Or using an extended metaphor about babies to show why Teiji Shintaro would be an utter disaster as DTW World Champion. Or my repeated calling of Erik Holland a title-craving thirsty bitch.
You don't have to have the absolute gospel with citations with names, dates, times, and sources. You don't need to append a bibliography and have footnotes. You don't need to have documents listing the legal precedents.
So you just lean back, relax, take on your good posture, take a deep breath, clear your throat, and say something plausible.
For example, state your opponent's heritage and appearance and start making criticisms there.
Deep breath, in and out.
Ahem.
Josh Kennedy is the result of a drunken Ted Kennedy at a DC orgy jacking off into the middle of a loaf of meth-injected Wonderbread that he proceeded to give a dirty sanchez to that somehow came to life.
Last names, they match!
Ted Kennedy, total lush.
DC orgy? May or may not be plausible. If you want to ship Orrin Hatch and Strom Thurmond and can picture them making out in the background while Ted Kennedy does unspeakable things to baked goods you sure can.
You're welcome for the mental image.
Meth injected? Joshy-Moshy is soooo skinny. Poor boy wants to win the DTW World Championship so he can get him a sammich.
The dirty sanchez? Let me just say that I have googled images of this man. There are men who can make facial hair work. There are men who should not, under any circumstances, attempt to grow themselves a crop of face fungus. Our dear Mr. Kennedy (KENNEDY!) is decidedly in the latter category.
And again by stating something so ridiculous and pegging it as the truth, I've made the thing also funny.
And because I said "pegging," somewhere in the world Manny Fernandez has broken out into a cold sweat and has no idea why.
Anyway, when you make claims against your opponent you need to make them be funny, ridiculous, exaggerated, or true.
But for fuck's sake, Josh, at the very least, even if you can't go for true, make sure that your bullshit is at least remotely plausible.
The only thing I've ever truly wanted out of professional wrestling was a proper challenge. Somebody capable of physically and mentally competing with me on equal footing. I want a war of words, a battle of banter, a siege of syllables, just as much as I want to find somebody who is capable of taking me to my limit in honorable combat.
And it is to my great sorrow that you are not the man who will give this to me, Josh.
Kawamata tried, but he's been behind the woodshed huffing paint thinner with you, and so you're both spouting the same shit from your mouths like you've both just joined the Teiji Shintaro Boys' Choir.
The only person that has ever bothered to banter with me is fucking Riddick, and even then it's like 25% banter and 75% sexual harassment. And originally I thought I'd finally had a proper rival, but while our initial draw was promising, as his mental state has degraded he's been less and less of a challenge. Hell, these days he's more of a therapy animal that I beat the shit out of every so often to make myself feel better.
I'm not afraid of losing.
Gods above and below, if I could find somebody who was capable of going toe to toe, blow for blow with me in a legitimate, honest to goddess match and beat me clean for the DTW World Championship I would be the happiest dragoness in the world.
What I want more than anything is for there to be someone that I can trust to share the burden of making DTW the best and most celebrated deathmatch promotion in the world.
It would not have been good for Masatake Kawamata to win my World Championship, as it would diminish the title. Simply becoming another jewel in his crown.
I couldn't let Erik Holland take my belt either, for he was too focused on winning championships rather than defending them, nurturing them, helping the feds that host them to grow.
If someone had several children when you agreed to a date and by the time the date rolled around he managed to lose, misplace, or drive away even one of them you most certainly wouldn't let the son and/or daughter of a bitch babysit your fuckin' kid.
And you, Josh? You're not going to be the one either.
You can't look at a situation and realize the truth of it. I may be a shit-stirring, trolling, snarky bitch of a sentient being, but I'm not a coward, and I certainly haven't gotten everything I ever wanted.
If you knew anything about me, if you'd have so much as watched one promo, you'd have known that. The only way you could have been any more wrong would have been to state that I had a weakness to water, that my hair was purple, my skin was white, and that I had a thatch of tentacles extended from just above my butt.
Are you so blind to the world outside of yourself that you just missed these things?
Are you so lacking in drive that you didn't bother to look into me at all?
Or have you just decided to lie and slander me in order to puff yourself up, striding around like the world's dirtiest peacock?
Which one is it Josh?
Are you stupid?
Are you lazy?
Are you lying?
But me, personally?
I think the answer here is D, all of the above.
The central theme of my time here in DTW has been me building up this promotion and how it's different from all the other wrestling federations out there. This is the only place where I've been given a fair shake. Even after I joined DTW literally every other fed that I've attempted to join has treated me poorly.
It took me three years to win a title. Took me three years to FINALLY get a title match that was free of outside interference.
It took another year after that to build up DTW into something big, something wonderful, something where I wasn't facing the same three people every show.
If you honestly think that I've gotten everything that I ever wanted, there is something wrong with your brain.
In all my time in professional wrestling the one thing, the only thing, I've gotten that I wanted was the DTW World Championship.
I've given up on everything else. Given up on having a career outside of DTW. Given up on becoming a mainstay in multiple federations. Given up on entering and winning prestigious tournaments. Given up on being invited to special events. Given up on being treated decently anywhere but in DTW.
And as time goes on I start to wonder if I will even have to give up on that minuscule scrap of solace.
I've pledged my life to DTW, and after making this vow my beloved wrestling federation has seen fit to do little more than demean and belittle me.
And I'm starting to despair that I will have to give up yet another thing.
I'm starting to lose hope that DTW will grant me the worthy challenger that I need, the eternal rival that my repeated clashes with will send this federation to greater and greater heights. Somebody who will provide me with the physical, mental, and intellectual challenges I crave.
You're not the one, Josh. You've proven that today with your thoughts, with your words, and with your deeds.
I will not have the challenger this promotion, the fans, and I deserve.
I will simply have to crush you, crush your body, crush your spirit, crush your hopes and dreams and cast the dust of your unfortunate tournament victory and contendership aside.
It should have been Hanako standing in opposition of me.
Someone with heart. Someone with a sense of humor. Someone who is fun. Someone who doesn't poison everyone around her with filthy lies and slander about me.
And maybe in time, she'll manage to win the right to face me for the DTW World Championship.
But today is not that day.
Today, I get to meager sacrifice scraps of glory to my championship.
It's not a singles match, so it doesn't quite count as much.
But a woman who has a scant two titles and a special event on her resume and her two associates who have only had fleeting moments with the DTW Eternal Warfare championship and an evening spent holding a stolen IJPW Championship belt will at least gain something from this bout.
After all, Joshua, you're CWC World Champion, Kamikaze Pro Tag Team League Champion, IJPW's Deadly Games Champion, and the 2018 Deathmatch Demolition winner. Even though I wish with all my heart that it had been somebody else.
And as per usual Masatake Kawamata strides in with his many championships, his Carnage Carnival victory, and his special event trophies. But they've begun to lose their luster after I've already defeated him.
Oh, and Poe has a title too, I guess? Way to be the "...and Zoidberg" of your team here, sport. Your pals have world championships, team championships, and special event victories. I guess you're the sprig of parsley on this bountiful banquet.
I've once again been denied my heart's desire.
Once again I have had my hopes and dreams for the future dashed upon the unforgiving rocks of reality.
I don't think it's so much to ask.
For somebody that I can have a proper verbal jousting with.
Somebody that cares about DTW more than they care about themselves.
Somebody who wants to take this company to greater heights under their eventual reign as DTW World Champion.
I do not fear losing, Josh Kennedy.
The thing I most fear is that I will never find somebody worthy to carry the DTW World Championship, and thus damning me to carry and defend it for all eternity.
You state that I have everything that I ever wanted.
Oh Joshua, even if my career hadn't been a never-ending series of miseries your mere presence would render that statement invalid.
The thing I want most in the world of professional wrestling is a potential successor.
It breaks my heart that you are not it.
I had such high hopes for you.
But then you decided to open your mouth and speak obvious untruths.
In doing so you did not lower my standing, but rather than of yourself and of DTW as a whole.
You overcame sixteen other wrestlers to earn the honor that you will soon face me for.
If only your words and your heart were as beautiful and vibrant as your wrestling ability.
You disappoint me, Josh.
I'd hoped that you were the one.
I'd hoped that our feud would be legendary.
But instead of a legend, it will instead be merely a cautionary tale for those who seek to dethrone me.
I have not found my Grand Rival, my Eternal Opposition. Another soaring dragon to fill the heavens with our roars of conquest and the flames of our never-ending battle.
I am, unfortunately, alone in the sky.
There will be no roars, no flames, no feats of incredible aerial acrobatics.
If on this day I cannot be a dragon fighting in ecstatic battle, I instead choose to be a cloud.
Today I will have to be satisfied with raining on your Filth Parade.
-o-
[And with that we pull back from the image of Kalinda Kriegsdottir, DTW World Champion, Dragoness, Necromancer Queen, and Bosslady Extraordinaire shaking her head sadly to the very image of that on a TV screen. And then we pull back, and back, and back to the sight of everybody's favorite clown and kittygirl minions sitting on a sofa with popcorn.]
[Delilah doesn't seem to quite grasp the situation, mostly because I've made the whole thing have a sleepover aesthetic, so she's wearing short shorts, a t-shirt that bares her midriff because it's got to cling to two pairs of boobies instead of one, and a pair of large, kitty paw slippers on her already large kitty paw feet. Mostly I think it's because she's confused as to the purpose of the slippers. Which is of course, for comedy purposes.]
Claudia: "So, what do you think?"
Delilah: "I think I wonder why Eddy Poe, large of three Filth Parade members, does not devour other two for misdeeds."
[Aaaand now I'm sharing Del-Del's former expression of confusion.]
Claudia: "Err… human beings don't have insectoid social dynamics. Wait a minute..."
[The dark elven catgirl is smirking.]
Claudia: "Was that a pop culture reference?"
Delilah: "Yes."
Claudia: "You can DO that?"
[Delilah chuckles.]
Delilah: "Have been hanging around with Kalinda for better part of half-century. Things rub off. Also silly, stupid cartoon show with very smart writers amuses me."
Claudia: "Wait, what?"
Delilah: "Simpsons and Futurama writers for most part are actually very smart. Futurama actually has contributed academic paper on mathematical formula to collective knowledge and wisdom."
Claudia: "Really?"
Delilah: "Yes. Is not all belch, belch, fart, fart, doo doo jokes. Current Simpsons is shell of former self, though."
[I just stare blankly at Delilah. Our serious resident dark elven catgirl evil Disney princess blacksmith likes shows like that. Weird.]
Delilah: "Stop staring like have grown third head and close mouth before attracting of flies. Flies do not deserve horrible fate of Claudia mouth."
Claudia: "My mouth is a wonderful, bright, pristine realm of wonder!"
Delilah: "What smells strongly of black licorice."
Claudia: "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BLACK LICORICE! BLACK LICORICE IS A POOR, MISUNDERSTOOD CUTIE PIE!"
Delilah: "Is of yuck without enough salt."
[More staring at Delilah. Turns out her efficient, serious German-esque personality also extends to serious, German-esque candy tastes.]
Claudia: "Sweets should be sweet, like me!"
Delilah: "You are not sweet. You are rotten and curdled. You are cotton candy flavored Casu Marzu."
Claudia: "What is that? What even is that?"
[Delilah licks her lips.]
Delilah: "Sardinian version of popular dark elven cheese. Has live maggots in for additional protein."
Claudia: "So I'm still delicious?"
Delilah: "For some. For others vomit instead at mere thought."
Claudia: "Anyway! Back to matters at hand! Josh Kennedy..."
Delilah: "Is going to die. Kalinda will kill. Metaphoric kill, not actual. Do not get in way, just stay back, relax, chew thumbtacks, and watch pound speaker of falsehoods into fine gooey paste."
Claudia: "Chewing thumbtacks?"
[Delilah raises a brow.]
Delilah: "You are telling me you are not going to be even remotely tempted to chew on thumbtacks?"
Claudia: "Well, of course I'm going to be chewing on them! They are approximately popcorn sized and make an effective replacement for popcorn as a prop! I'm just annoyed that you're ruining the punchline by stating it ahead of time!"
Delilah: "Feh. Is not funny joke if can be guessing of punchline from weeks away. Claudia jokes in ring very easy to guess. Very easy to see coming."
Claudia: "Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?"
[Delilah makes her eyes go all wide and holds up her hands against the side of her face, miming as if to show they ought to be even bigger.[
Delilah: "ALL."
Claudia: "Stop memeing! You're not allowed to be memeing! It's weird!"
[The dark elf sticks her rough kitty tongue out and blows a raspberry at me.]
Claudia: "Hmph. You sure are Kalinda's friend alright."
Delilah: "Yes. Grotesque blue toadbeast is worst influence."
Claudia: "Anyway! Back on topic! Hey, wait, why am I the one getting us back on topic?"
Delilah: "Because you are also grotesque toadbeast."
Claudia: "I do not ribbit!"
Delilah: "Had mouth open, attempting to catch flies earlier!"
Claudia: "HUSH!"
[I clamp my hand over the mouthy catgirl's chatterbox.]
Claudia: "ANYWAY! So what're your thoughts on the Menagerie vs. Filth Parade match?"
Delilah: "Mrph. Mph. Mrp."
[I take my hand off of her mouth.]
Delilah: "Thank you. Joshua Kennedy is filled with things what fall out of south end of northbound riding lizard. Agree with Kalinda. Is stupid, lazy, liar. How does Kalinda say? 'Douchecanoe and Tigger Too?'"
[I jump up from the couch and stomp my foot.]
Claudia: "STOP MEMEING AND BEING SILLY!"
Delilah: "No."
[The catgirl reaches up with on hand, extends a finger and pokes me in the snoot.]
Delilah: "Boop."
[I fall over, limp, as if I were a puppet that had my strings cut as I make a "Bwoooo!"-like powering down noise. Because pretending my nose is an off switch is funny. Delilah munches a handful of popcorn.]
Delilah: "Joshua Kennedy is perhaps most loathsome toadbeast of them all. Like Kalinda says, if he has even done slightest bit of research, if only he be watchings of one promo, truths will be of smacking him in the face like horse dick on baseball bat."
[Delilah gives a thumbs up.]
Delilah: "Is very amusing weapon. Joshua Kennedy? Not so amusing. Ignorant, uninformed, possibly delusional. He does not know just how long Kalinda and I have been at one another's sides. She has spent much of her life fighting battles that I have unwittingly dragged her into."
[Delilah smiles sinisterly, showing fangs, and steepling her fingers.]
Delilah: "Let us dispense for a moment with my hilarious Elven accent, shall we?"
[Delilah's manner of speech changes as she is no longer laying it on quite so thickly.]
Delilah: "It is something I do for the purposes of amusement and distraction. Playing up my Elven accent makes Kalinda laugh, and she is one that needs as much levity as she can be granted in life, for it has not treated her well."
"Long ago, in an era when the bloated tangerine that occupies your throne of governance was of the age to have his first bed-dampening dream of grabbing a pussy, a young Delilah na Kinai and a younger Kalinda Kriegsdottir met."
"Our relationship began not as one of friendship, but as one of a warrior in training and her designated punching bag. Her aunt was hired by my mother to teach me how to fight, as I was the heir to a position of power, the hereditary leader of a city-state deep beneath the earth. It is not a place for the weak, the feeble, the arrogant, or the stupid."
"You could look upon it as a sort of professional wrestling title, as the only way it could be claimed aside from death or abdication is through combat. Throughout your life, if you are a potential bloodline successor you have three opportunities to challenge for the throne. Much like in baseball, three strikes and you are out."
"Except that you can challenge the heir. And as my mother's eldest child of the matriarch caste, I was the Firstborn True Daughter of Dara na Kinai, and thus the next in line to lead House Darkbolt and administrate the Twenty Third Grand City of Tombs."
"The dark elven race has innate in its blood the potential mastery of three magics: Evocation, Enchantment, and Transmutation. The Matriarch caste is the most likely to be born with two or even three types of sorcery at their beck and call. I, however, was not so lucky."
"I am solely capable of commanding Enchantment and my strengths within it lie in the crafting of magic items and the empowerment of others. I am limited in that I cannot directly enhance myself, for that is the realm of Transmutation. But I can call upon the totem spirits of beasts and bind them to my allies."
"In order to defend herself, an Enchanter must acquire a Soulbound Guardian, typically an animal or monster of low intellect so that the souls do not bleed into one another. She imbues her Guardian with a sliver of her soul. Through that sliver she may cast her spells upon her Guardian at any distance, through any protection."
"Just before I was born, with the aid of my sire and my elder siblings, my mother Dara defeated my aunt, Dao-Mai, and assumed the throne. Try as she might, my aunt could never defeat her half-sister even turning to alchemical enhancement and eventually into the embrace of vampyric undeath."
"Knowing that I required a Soulbound Guardian my aunt proceed to murder, never directly, always in various roundabout ways that showed her cunning, every single beast that I attempted to develop an attachment to. And with each creature that met its demise one more piece of my soul died along with it."
"The moment the clocks ticked over on the day of my 21st birthday, the day of my adulthood, my aunt sought to challenge me for the position of Heir for the first time. Assassins were sent to murder me, and it was only through the decade of sparring sessions with Kalinda, and her being present when the attacks began that I managed to survive."
"Dao-Mai paired the attempt on my life by unsealing an ancient evil in the midst of the city that I had been born to rule. The demonic hordes would not allow us to return to the palace, so Kalinda and I were forced to flee."
"And for days, weeks, and months we fled. Throwing ourselves into the unknown in order to survive and throw any pursuers off our trail. It was more than a decade before I returned home, and then it was not willingly."
"Her assassins found me, a message planted on their bodies in the case of their failure. I was accused of abandoning my House, my Clan, and my City. I was not dead, and yet I had not attempted to contact my kin for fear that any message I sent would be used to track my location. I had a year and a day to answer my aunt's challenge against my citizenship, or otherwise I would be outcast from all of Elvenkind."
"Dao-Mai was a Lesser Matriarch, a powerful, ascended variant of the Channeler caste. With their innate powers of Transmutation they were not limited to using the totem spirits of our House, our Clan, and our Lineage to empower themselves."
[Delilah stands up, kicking off her slippers and turns to show off her entire form, the camera zooms in on her furry, digitigrade legs, her equally bestial hands, her feline ears, her fangs, and of course her big floofy tail.]
Delilah: "The war between the High and the Dark Elves was one filled with casualties. One that resulted in the extinction of the noble and royal High Elven bloodlines and greatly thinning the numbers of all but the Channelers. As such, over time all Dark Elves came to inherit the base features of their Clan Totem. In the case of Clan Kinai, a snow leopard."
"A Channeler is this, but more so. A standard Channeler is only a little bit bigger then I am. But a Lesser Matriarch? They are huge, powerful, bestial monsters of elvenkind that make the present day Kalinda look like the Kalinda I met so long ago; tiny, sub five feet in height, and able to be picked up and put in your pocket."
"We were both well aware that I would never be able to compete with Dao-Mai in a proper fight. But I had to personally answer her challenge against me. Kalinda, in her late 20's standing only about five and a half feet in height, marched into Dao-Mai's lair in the midst of a party celebrating her potential ascension. Kalinda only had one goal in mind."
"And her goal? Survive long enough to bring down the protective barrier surrounding the central floors of Dao-Mai's hollowed out stalagmite-stalactite tower. The two had their points lopped off and flattened to serve as an open-air garden and a show of power and wealth."
"Kalinda managed to down the barrier, by being pinned to it with my aunt's sword through her sternum. It was only the fact that the blade nicked Kalinda's dormant Draconis Fundamentum, the organ that is the portal to a limitless store of the elemental power belonging to that dragon, that she survived."
"The coldfire licked over her body, pouring from the wounds in her chest and back. The lightning element of the blade and the Void-infused Ice and Fire overwhelming the barrier."
[Delilah raises her hand and points her fingers like a gun.]
Delilah: "I put a consecrated .50 caliber silver bullet through my aunt's heart and two more into her head as she fell."
[The dark elf kinslayer taps her gun shaped fingers against her chest once, and between her eyes twice.]
Delilah: "And from her acts of kindness over the decades, saving my life in the Twenty Third Grand City of Tombs, teaching a noble born princess who had never before seen the surface, the sun, or the sky how to live in the wilderness, gathering others and founding a town when it became apparent that the hands of two young women were not enough to get by, fighting side by side with me as we battled my wicked aunt's vampyric sire, Kalinda has saved my life time and time again."
"She is here, on this world, in this position because of what she chose to do for me. The accursed artifact grafted to her arm is there because she bit off the arm of the vampire sorceress it was attached to. Who sought to make us her undead servants in retaliation for daring to kill her only vampyric chylde."
"In the battle that ensued, the result of forty years of friendship, of fighting side by side, of being there for one another, saving each other from death and peril over and over again snapped into place. I had my Soulbound Guardian, not because I had cut out a piece of myself and shoved it into her, but because she had soaked up so many tiny motes of me in our decades as friends that all we needed to trigger the bond was one final spark of need."
"In our darkest moment our very essences were irrevocably tied together, and due to our victory in that battle she was ripped away from her home and dumped here. A magicless, backwards, empty little world with no heart and no soul to call its own. A world of men that seem so bent on destroying themselves, and everyone else along with them."
"I spit on you, Joshua Kennedy. I spit on you, on your faction, and most of all on your so-called bond of 'brotherhood.' You know not the struggles that we have faced, nor the burdens of our years at one another's sides."
"You think that the union of a few short years compares to a friendship that was forged before your grandparents reached the age of consent? You think that a woman who threw herself at a monster of a sentient being several times her size without a second thought is a coward who fears you?"
"No, pet, you don't think. That's the whole issue. You don't think. You don't look. You don't listen. You pay attention to little outside your own little self-contained world."
"You look and see nothing but your own struggles, blind to the hardships of others, lashing out with an acid tongue uncaring of the falsehoods it speaks."
"You just told a woman who spent four years as the only member of her race and her culture on this world, isolated and alone from anyone and everything that she ever loved, that she'd gotten everything that she ever wanted."
"You just told a woman who spent three years in a never-ending series of miseries, each worse than the last, that she'd gotten all her heart ever desired."
"You just told a woman from another world who cannot so much as point in the direction of home that all her fondest wishes had been granted."
[Delilah sneers and spits a hefty glob of saliva at the feet of the cameraman.]
Delilah: "Change your ways, little one. For the road you have set before yourself may be in the short term one of grandness and glory, setting you to fly high, but in time your pride and your vanities will catch up with you and bring you crashing back down to earth."
"You are wrong, Joshua Kennedy, in stating that we are immortal. The sand that flows through my hourglass is perhaps an order of magnitude greater than yours, but it will run out all the same. Kalinda? She will be as to me as I am to you. Claudia? She's already dead, and she dies again and again and again for her own amusement."
"You are wrong that we see ourselves as flawless and godlike. And you are just as wrong to think that they are synonyms of one another. I have seen gods. I have met gods. I have known gods. I have spent dozens of years trying to figure out a way to evict a cannibalistic, soul-devouring dragon goddess from the mind, body, and soul of my Guardian."
"The gods are everything mortals are, only more so. Their highs are higher and their lows are lower. They can rise to unparalleled heights of heroism, or sink into the utmost depths of wickedness and depravity."
"This world has no gods. Whether they never were, stepped away, or most likely looked upon the sentient creation they breathed into life and slit their wrists in absolute despair and bled out upon their empyreal thrones, it doesn't matter."
"They aren't here now, in your time of need. Your world is self-destructing so that a few hundred human beings can line their pockets while the rest of the world burns. Literally, as the record number of wildfires will indicate."
"At the time when you most need miracles, your gods are absent. You have no clerics to heal your diseases with a wave of their hands and an offering of faith. You have no magics to aid you, guide you, shelter you, shield you, protect you, or warm you."
"But do not believe for an instant that magic is a cure-all, a panacea, a solution for every problem. We cannot simply wave our hands, chant a few words, and make all our ills go away."
"I crafted together a machine of artifice, alchemy, sorcery, sweat, toil, blood and bone to rip a hole between realities. Then I broke it into pieces, studied those pieces, and then built it up again. And again. And again."
"Each iteration bigger, simpler, easier to assemble. And then I built two of them, one that I put together and one that I kept in pieces."
"In order to give Kalinda Kriegsdottir the one thing she desires most above all things, the ability to go home, I made the laws of two realities and the void between my personal bitch."
"Compared to that, Joshua Kennedy, you and your Filth Parade will be easy."
"I can only pray that Kalinda leaves enough pieces of you attached to one another to allow me to punish your arrogance, your ignorance, your hubris, but above all for that really, REALLY bad mustache you were attempting to grow."
"Is offense to all of mammalkind."
[Delilah's accent is back as she kneels down and pokes my nose once again. I pop up to my feet and make various kung fu motions.]
Delilah: "Boop."
Claudia: "Huh? Who? What? Where? When? How? And sometimes why? What happened while I was out?"
[Delilah smirks and pats my cheek.]
Delilah: "Nothing of import. You go do talky thing now. Am going to get new popcorns. This tastes of artificial butter and Joshua Kennedy's late-onset teenaged know-it-all phase."
[Delilah shoves the popcorn bowl into my arms.]
Claudia: "Hey! Come back! We're having a slumber party! We're supposed to do each other's nails, well, claws and talk about boys! Boys were are going to beat all the peas out of, but boys nonetheless!"
Delilah: "Have already talked about boys that I am to beat the peas out of. Am wanting popcorns that do not taste of arrogance. Ta ta!"
[Delilah heads off leaving me with the popcorn and I make grumpy noises and pop a few pieces into my mouth.]
Claudia: "Hmph. Needs more arrogance."
[I take out a baby blue atomizer helpfully labeled "Arrogance" out of hammerspace and give it a good spritz onto the popcorn. Then realizing that Delilah's not going to be eating any more I give it a good half dozen quick, rapid-fire blasts.]
Claudia: "Mmm. Tastes like the deadliest sin of all."
[I plop down onto the sofa and give the camera a forlorn look.]
"Well, it's just me, guess I can get rid of the dialogue tags. As if you can't tell who's speaking depending on what color accent we have. Then again you could be color blind. Or a dog. Or a color-blind dog. Because on the internet nobody knows you're a dog. Or an FBI agent. Or a blind dog who is an FBI agent. Would you watch that show? I'd watch that show."
"Boy did the Filth Parade ever step in it. Cause Bosslady and the Weeaboo's Walking Wet Dream, nyah, are piiiiiiiiissed. So pissed off that I actually have to say a cuss and have to eat some soap later to make up for it."
"Doesn't really matter to me. Because everybody knows that these matches are just filler shows before the big thing at the Tokyo Dome. Which means that Dave Meltzer automatically adds a star! I wanna wrestle the one Bushwhacker that can still move so that Big Dave has to throw up in his mouth a little bit to watch one of the participants of the infamous Bushwhackers/Bolsheviks suckfest on the stage of his beloved Tokyo Dome."
"They can't really put on anything big so they don't upstage that show, so they have to do little things like this where you'll get previews of the matches you'll get at the Dome, and also have a bit of the ongoing quasi-contendership thingy between me and Joe Stanton. 'Cause you know, that whole 'OH MY GOD, CLAUDIA HAS PINNED THE IRON JAPAN PRO WRESTLING DEATH CLOWN CHAMPION!'"
"Because that's what it's called! Listen to the ring announcer! It's the Death Clown Championship, and as an undead clown it being on anybody is cultural appropriation! It's like D'Lo Brown having the European Championship and never actually defending it in Europe! Or a Quebecoise holding the Saskatchewan Hardcore International Title."
"Anyway! Since Kal and Del already spent FOREVERS talking about the Filth Parade and Josh "Such a Horrible Human Being His Own Mother Banished Him From the House Upon Whence He Abducted His Own Pregnant Sister and Dragged Her to Live in a Trailer Park in Reno, Just to Watch Her Cry" Kennedy's entitled manbaby whining like a clueless white dude wondering when White History Month is and why there are no Straight Pride parades…"
[I pull up my pants to approximately my navel, put on a pair of armed forces issue birth-control goggles, suck in my lower lip, and make my voice high pitched and nasal for that whole entitled manbaby bit. Hey! Look at me Joshy! I can make up outright lies impugning your character too! Isn't that nice when somebody takes this you said completely out of context and grants you sinister ambitions? Teach you to talk mean about my Evil Overlord ever again!]
"I figured I ought to at least touch upon Rob Sharpe and Joe Stanton. Though most of the touching is probably going to be on their butts. Because butt-touching in the context of professional wrestling matches is inherently funny."
"So, guys, we totally need to just sit in the ring and play Pinochle or something. Out of protest. Because corporate sponsorship of deathmatches is complete and udder cow poop. See what I did there?"
"It's horrible! You've got these uncaring corporate who force people to work in crappy conditions, forced to interact with people who are never satisfied, for crappy pay, no healthcare, and workers that attempt to unionize are promptly fired! OUT OF A CANNON AND INTO THE SUN!"
"Am I talking about Corporations or am I talking about Professional Wrestling Federations? The answer to that is yes. It's a match made in heaven! Oh noes, you got your peanut butter in my every so slightly different peanut butter, and now there is a big glob of peanut butter here. You can tell it's wrestling only because they'll make two scantily clad women wrestle in it instead of making some poor guy who has no training in dangerous peanut-alogical hazardous waste disposal clean it up illegally."
"So boo on DTW! Boo on Seiyu! Boo on the whole concept of this match! Boo on the bourgeoisie making us wrestle to promote their stupid store! Boo on them donating light tubes past their expiration date and rotten meat that's still perfectly good! There are hundreds of homeless ghouls in the Tokyo area that would just love that rotten meat! There are so many there's even an anime and a manga about them. Called, of course, Tokyo Ghoul. And I bet that gasoline is still perfectly drinkable too!"
"Join me, comrades! Refuse to take up arms in defense of the common man! Join me in nonviolent revolution against our evil corporate overlords! Because cold, impersonal evil carried out for love of money by a faceless corporation just isn't proper evil!"
"Evil needs to be handmade and custom tailored in order to deliver utmost wickedness on an individual basis. If it isn't personalized just for you, it's not actual evil. It's just three instances of douchebaggery stacked on one another's shoulders cloaked in a trenchcoat of avarice!"
"Don't rise up! Sit down and refuse to fight on behalf of The Man on behalf of one corporation giving another one a reach around! Say no to the empty suits in charge of…"
[I gasp in horror.]
"THEY'VE ALREADY GOTTEN TO JOE! Agent Smith crawled up sweet Joey Jojo Shabadoo Senior's taut derriere and is using him as a meat puppet! Don't think I've forgotten that whole "Agent" Joseph Stanton thing you were doing not all that long ago! I'm onto you, Elrond Hubbard! You're not going to trick us into the Matrix to sign up for your Elf Scientology!"
"ALL HAIL THE DARK LORD XENU, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO TAKE ME ALIVE, YOU SONS OF BISCUITS, BECAUSE I'M ALREADY DEAD!"
[I then get a running start and promptly dive through the closed window because I like the tinkly sounds broken glass makes. Of course, I have done so just in time for Delilah to have witnessed my outburst.]
Delilah: "What of fuck?"
[She frowns and scowls a bit, then shrugs and sits down on the sofa, putting her slippers back on and picking up the TV remote.]
Delilah: "I wonder if Futurama is on."
[She clicks the remote and the camera picture narrows with a proper electronic "Bwoooo!"]
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