Post by Sicko on May 5, 2024 13:21:38 GMT -5
It's dusk in the Mojave Desert, settling into the crevices, an awe-inspiring, desolate sight.
The rocks are red turning shades of lavender as the sun goes down.
The sparse grass, low-lying cacti, honed to survive in these conditions because of generations of evolution.
"There's a saying going around, currently, by a songbird who'd performed at XIII once or twice; 'You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where I grew up, well;"
He lets his hand drift up, expansively indicating to take in the brutal, natural terrain surrounding him.
"I don't need to tell you the ways this Aspect truly formed, the grueling ritual of Becoming as I curled fetal, laying here for months."
"I don't need to tell you anything at all."
"What it means, is come the dawn over this week's Clash, you're entering the Badlands, wandering, without hope, direction, preparation into a desert leaving you as nothing but scorched, bleached bones in the sun."
"A gauntlet match, signifying that if I had hope in Hell of emerging still champion I'd need to start from the top, working my way through you all."
"You'd think this would instill me with fear."
"That the thought of needing to go through not just The Green, now humbly attempting to fix his severed limb back on top as he did with Gawain beginning the fight anew... but Niobe... Mercedes... even Jay Best? That'd give me pause..."
"Except that if none of them have the slightest inkling of the inhuman conditions it took for me to be formed, then I can say with certainty not one has what it takes to survive the blistering heat that emerged from the forge."
"That NONE of you, will escape the Badlands."
"We'll have to start with you, Green Knight because from the moment you swam to consciousness at Blast, I saw a sullen glimmer in your eyes that said maybe you weren't done."
I don't think you quite realize how total the defeat at Blast WAS."
You lost, conclusively, due to your inaction, Green, contradicting your stated thesis of you being a sharpening rasp to hone the company's future."
"How can you lead the company forward if you give zero effort?"
"Can't even say it was an isolated incident, Green, you gave the same nothing when you faced a layup in Isara. The entire time, I was naming you for what you aren't. Showing how the premise of you as some mythical Arthurian creature that felt no pain was patently disprovable, how utterly human and fallible you were."
"Now where will you fall?"
"The grim, implacable specter that nobody escapes... or a desperate man who needs to fight from underneath, to get back something he let slip through his fingers?"
"Or, as you have twice before, will you simply say nothing?"
"You won't be alone in that, given the alternative. I'm expecting at least two competitors in this match to give little effort; I don't take it personally. I invoke terror, after all."
"When Jay Best's first match was AGAINST me and he saw what he would deal with, he chose to remain silent."
"It's a bold tactic, for someone whose gimmick is 'they're-da-bestest-most-specialest-widdle-boy-who-ever-lived-uwu' but the reality is, that he's just happy to have a roster spot. Without realizing, there are a dime-a-dozen greedy, vapid little whores in this company, who would be happy for his spot."
"Vespertine."
"Mercedes."
"Niobe."
"If Jay doesn't wanna be the first to speak up I've absolutely no doubt Mercedes will, but beyond affecting the absolute most headache-inducing attempt at reconciling Cookie Monster-Pants White-Girl AAVE-speak, there's never anything of substance to the "Trailer Park Princess" and she's done absolutely nothing to warrant any consideration as a threat."
"She was laughed off as a non-factor by Addy."
"She couldn't even wrest a now-defunct title from Karlie Nash and that is about the lowest tier someone could aspire to."
"Every single thing that makes sense about MAD clicks when you realize that she's an empty-headed, SOMA-addicted, starsucking little weakling that just aspires to get famous because she doesn't like where she lives."
"Were Niobe Martin not in this match, she'd be the epitome of weak."
"See, Niobe shares a commonality with the aforementioned Vespertine; always needs to fill the air with as many references to nightmares, evilness, and insanity as possible to let the boys know she's dark and twisted."
"Laughably, tweens were accomplishing the same thing by writing emo poetry about cutting their wrists set to a Hollywood Undead song auto-playing on their Livejournals sixteen years ago."
"Niobe's a grown-ass woman, still aping that aesthetic, still trying to get over how dark she is, all the while she couldn't sell a sense of menace if she were waving around a bleeding, barbed-wire bat."
"It isn't that I don't believe, that Niobe believes, deep down, that she is that sick."
"It's that, tryhard as they might, they've proven they don't have what it takes to take the heat. Wilting under pressure. There's entirely too many instances afforded of being put into a big match, against a foe with superior strength and just folding."
"So I don't particularly care to hear the shrieks of desperation from little girls who try to speak past their nose telling everyone how they NEED to win, how they'll do anything to be champion, even show us how twisted they'll need to get."
"I was formed under pressures that break weak, pencil-thin little girls, vain opprobrium that never deserved to be given considerations. That's why it's apropos to make this wasteland my hunting field, my killing floor."
"It won't be enough for me until I've made myself undisputed, left no doubt in anyone's mind that this is the best version of myself I've ever been."
"I can't do that until I leave five skulls sitting on the sand as a reminder of whose fucking house they walked into."
"You shouldn't have sent anyone into the Badlands... that you wanted back."