Author Topic: Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. XXIII –A Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing  (Read 828 times)

Offline Terrorfexx

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Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. XXIII – A Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing

[The Present – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA]


The mud was soft underfoot, sliding down the hillside in thick clumps as she scrambled up towards the brow, heels digging trenches all the way back down to the valley floor. Somewhere near the top she flipped onto her front, heaving the precious transit case over the lip of the hill as she twisted. It landed in a cluster of gnarled tree roots, exposed and dead where the embankment had slid away in heavy rains. The rock securing her free hand slipped suddenly, beginning to wander down through the mud. She brought her feet up instinctively, but the toes of her boots just gouged wet earth. Her free hand swung upwards, grasping a tree root and breaking it off instantly. 
 
A hand thrust out, clamping tight around her wrist. Painfully tight. It hauled her up. Abigayle rolled onto the top, wet and panting. 
 
“Good to go Ma’am?” 
 
Abigayle nodded, pawing at the sweat stinging her eyes. “Good to go …” She managed, sprawled out across the grass with the stock of her rifle resting on her muddied chest. “Thank you.”
 
Alice turned her own weapon on its side and flicked a gobbet of mud from the cocking handle. “All part of the Corps’ service.”
 
On their belt buckles they crept forward under the low-hanging branches of the trees crowning the hilltop, until the ground fell away sharply out to meet rolling farm fields. Flinging her ILBE in front to rest the stock of her weapon on, Alice surveyed the land below through its scope, panning the muzzle left and right. Shielded by the treeline and an outcrop of rock, Abigayle relaxed the taut muscles in her legs, holding the shivers in check and skin off soaked fabric. Her breath billowed out into the night sky.
 
“I think we found the not-so-Friendly Fire Support responsible for slagging that APV we found earlier. Eighty metres dead ahead, Grain Silo, Hundred Metres left and makin’ real hard work of trying not to be seen.”
 
Abigayle followed the directions with her own scope, picking out a cluster of blurry shapes moving in and out of dead ground. She adjusted for granularity, but the limitations of night vision – of this outdated kit – left her struggling to pick out any detail beyond a luminous green mass.  “I cannot see anything distinctive with this antique. What about Thermal?”
 
“Like a lava lamp, and old or not this kit kills just as surely. Kills people, I mean. Ain’t nothing works too well on Ghosts. Nothing that ain’t man-portable anyhow.”
 
Frowning, Abigayle glanced back through the scope and did her best to focus on the figures and not thoughts of Phantoms. The ethereal nickname for a group of local rebels known for their ability to appear spontaneously with the element of complete surprise, and leave none alive. At least none who did not otherwise wish to be counted amongst the dead.  “Are you sure?”
 
“Two years at MCD San Diego says I’d recognise a parody of tactical advance. Probably some reservist boot with delusions made real by the end of the world. Maybe a POG? Or worse …”
 
Alice’s jaw tightened up in a sneer. “Air Force? Don’t matter either way, the temperature dead zones breaking up their outlines are a dead giveaway. Not unless we started drafting cows into the fight. Things are about desperate enough. Might be poetic, lettin’ them lead us to the slaughter for once.”
 
“How do you know they’re responsible for hitting us?
 
A flash blinded the scope, forcing Abigayle to jerk her head back from the reticule. With her good eye she watched a brilliant point of light erupt from the dark farmland below, dragging a twisted trail of thick smoke as it corkscrewed through the air. It crashed into the silo wall midway up and tumbled in, detonating as it tried to escape through the opposite side. Wood splintered, shearing crops clustered around the blackened stonework base and throwing up a cloud of burning grain that set fire to anything it rained on.   
 
The group spilled out of the dark and into the flickering light of the half-dozen fires they’d started, patting out their smouldering clothes. She could hear voices, or at least the tone – excited, exhilarated. From somewhere up in the blazing top of the silo a section of metal chute lurched out into the night sky, shining and warped. A wild hand threw up in the air picking it out and the gut-rumbling punch of an automatic rifle drowned everything else out. The rounds landed high and wide, disappearing into the burning wreckage and detonating inside with muffled thumps.
 
Alice had seen enough. She slung her ILBE back over her shoulder. “Every Ghost for two dozen miles plus change saw that, or heard it, or felt it – or whatever it is they do. We need to bug out now, before they show up and give those folk somethin’ real to shoot at and miss. Or hit and achieve squat.”
 
“We are still a twenty miles east of the Blue Line and fifteen west of the Green—”
 
“Ma’am,” The Marine interrupted. “If we still had recognisable defensive lines, neat drawn on some map, we wouldn’t be crawlin’ halfway back to California on our belt buckles, being blown up by farmers turned operators. ‘Cept for maybe the Canucks up far north, the Ghosts are everywhere. From sea to shining sea.”
   
Abigayle craned her neck up and over towards the flower girl named after the stars, abruptly and dissonantly stood in the open ahead of the tree line with her feet on the cusp of the hill as it fell away to farmland. “Did you think about helping them?”
 
Keeping her eyes on the burning silo, Abigayle watched the smouldering debris set fire to the surrounding barns and buildings where it settled. “We would only have died with them. They brought it on themselves.”
 
Cassie turned away from the orange glow. “Does it matter to you? Does anything matter? Is there anything at all that would’ve convinced you to stay, to try to defend these people?” 
 
Her hand closed around that familiar transit case, fingers sliding through the dents in the olive-green metalwork. Abigayle shook her head and pulled it in close. “No.” 
 
“The Ghosts took so long to finish them off …” Cassie mused aloud. She turned back towards the fire. “Screamed for so long, begging for help. You didn’t try to help–”
 
“Nobody did,” Abigayle snapped, climbing up to her wet feet. “Not a single one of those of us that survived the attack on the field hospital, even when we were doing our best to save the sick and the lame. Why is it I should simply join those lining up to throw their lives away. It was like trying to fight the sun with a stick …”
 
The flames in the fields below jerked, jumping out of place like a skipped frame. The fine detail of the world began to pixelate; the cold of the night left her bones instantaneously, replaced with comfortable nothingness. Everything bled colour–

 
“Who’re you talking to?”
 
The world – the real one – resolves itself back instantaneously, although the jarring juxtaposition feeds the intense pressure that makes my head ache. Standing in the doorway, clutching an upturned umbrella stands the familiar form of my newest acquaintance; one Avalon Blackthorn. She shakes the fabric, sending rivulets along its waterproof folds to splash against the carpet. Her eyes are narrowed, suspicious, and the bunching in her biceps tell me she is ready for the slightest perturbation. Ready to lash out.

Ready to strike.
 
From the desktop in front of me, I retrieve the upturned ceramic face and bring it up to press against its real, soft counterpart. The straps settle in tight above my ears and that reassuring claustrophobia, an unmistakable feeling of compression, settles in and down. Calmness finds purchase like cold composite against clammy skin. It sticks, and binds.
 
“Sometimes I dream when I am awake,” I reply, turning towards her. “I go to places I have been, and I speak with people I have met. Sometimes they are in impossible places, talking about things they had never seen.”
 
Nodding slowly, Avalon takes a few steps inside and closes the heavyset oak-panelled door behind herself. The bassy rumble of the rain outside is sharply cut out, replaced by the patter of wind-flecked droplets against the glass. “Where’s there, exactly?”
 
“The Killing Fields.”
 
She frowns. “Sounds delightful. Euphemistic, I’m guessing?”

 
[The Rapture]
 
 
There is something almost charming about your enthusiasm, Miss Wolfe. A refreshing frankness that might be equal parts naivety, depending on the emotional intelligence applied to scrutinise. It feels infectious in the way it stands apart from the same, tired cliches which circle around me like screeching spirits, wailing and warning about the same mistakes of the past doomed to repeat. After all, how can I not be a little fascinated by someone who simply recognises an opportunity and intends to do their best to maximise it? That you merely seize a chance and make it yours seems so simplistic, so linear, and yet such honesty sets you apart from virtually every member of this division.

A humble graduate of the Hero Academy, plucked from the masses and deposited onto centre stage at Climax Control, on Sunday, to do their best and realise a dream.

It is almost charming, if it were not so obviously a bitter pill slathered in molasses. Your words are a synthetic sweetness; the medicinal aftertaste engineered to make that internal unpleasantness more palatable to even more refined sensibilities. You are different from all the rest only in so much as you think where others talk.

They have tried to take this Championship from me by bravado and those words, and every one of them have failed – laid low by my thorn-painted hand. An endless cavalcade of pretenders, amateurs, wannabes and never-wills. They tell me I am nothing, they come and then they are in turn made into nothing. A pattern that is quickly reshaping itself into some Möbius Strip of reality-bending regularity. In between these failures, a Wolfe moves in shadow and watches. And waits.

This is not the first time that something wicked this way comes, stalking me. Hungering.

Perhaps you have been biding your time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Is it mere coincidence that you should pad along the cold path that leads to my door, not a single paw print in the frost, just as my Resplendent Hurricane begins to turn anew? Is there some greater work beginning to stitch itself from plot to realisation? Or, perhaps, I am simply seeing patterns that are no more real than the credentials you present to make your challenge anything more than an aberration.

Perhaps it is nothing more than some random permutation, made a very real risk by the potential to be fatally undermined and distracted just as a predator circles me in the periphery of my vision, while my full attention is turned up to the sky to watch the weather. Caught unawares by the hot stink of breath on the back of my neck and then, as incisors bite down and cut my skin, cut in half.

The Cherokee Peoples of North America tell a tale of two wolves inside each of us. One is the sum of our hopes and dreams, capable of all our greatest works and potential incarnate. Success, contentment, happiness all belong within its hunting grounds. The other is rage, and pain, and fury and every slight ever visited upon us and remembered in the vain hopes of some small semblance of revenge, someday. To feed one is to pick a path from which the totality of your life is decided. What you want, versus what you deserve. Pleasure … Or Pain. There is the powerful desire to spend so much time wondering which one you are; which path you have chosen to pad along and in doing so, tell us so much about who you are …

But their stories are tired and weary like the people who tell them. The richness wrung out by the years and all those tears wept through every wrong and misery inflicted. They are hollowed-out parables, briefly entertaining if the mind’s eye requires a distraction or a spell spent thinking about something inconsequential. Pause to think long enough, and the thread-worn exposition unpicks itself and all that is left are the broken souls who tell it.

When we strip away the Wolfe … What is left, Krystal?

 
[The Present – Las Vegas, Nevada, USA]


The plastic palm of my prosthetic rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees, servomotors whining as they drive it around. The hard, metal-core phalanges shaped like fingers twist and form a fist. When they extend, I look up.

“It had a real name,” I reply, although I did not know what it was. “It was a literalism.”

She flops down in a leather-backed chair opposite, tossing the wet umbrella onto the floor and throwing her sodden shoes up onto the top of a nearby desk; hands interlocked behind her head. “Take it you helped it along in earning that reputation?”

“No. I did my best to restrict its opportunities.”

Avalon purses her lips. “Got to confess I’m a bit surprised. Had you down as more of a do-er, rather than a prevent-er. Why were you there, anyway?”

“I was a Doctor.”

Her eyes wide slightly and she rocks forward, showing impressive flexibility at the wait to be able to do so without shifting her legs as she moves. “You?”

“Yes, me. Is that surprising?”

She blinks. “Absolutely.”

“Why?”

Her lips part a few times in words that never get a chance, before she settles on a shrug. “Never had you down as the caring type, I suppose. Always thought your talents were in hurting people, not fixing them.”

I cock my head to the side. “I did not care. It was simply something I was good at. It served a purpose until it did not and when it was no longer of use, I discarded it.”

“Life motto?” Avalon smirks, and I nod.

“Yes – at least for what is left of it.”

The smirk falters, and threatens to disappear entirely. Her legs swing away, trainers thumping softly with a squelch against the wet carpet. She leans forward, more focused but does not say anything for several long moments.

“I thought of you as someone cloaked in secrecy,” She begins. “Like I’d never get a straight answer from you about anything. As if you couldn’t even tell me your name with a straight face. Not that I could see it if you did, anyway.”

It is such a simple thing, so I give it to her. “My name is Abigayle.”

Avalon stares again, weighing up her next words carefully, before  gesturing at my mask. “So why is it that somehow, you’ve ended up one of the most honest people I know?”

That is relatively straightforward. “Because I am not attempting to be someone else, to project a different version of myself. There are so many different faces belonging to those few important people in your life, and they all cycle through them so quickly nowadays.”

Another long pause, punctuated by the drumbeat of rain-on-glass.

“Are you going to take on Red?”

Slowly, I climb to standing and step forwards until the short distance between us is virtually zero. Avalon tenses, fists balled, but she does not rise and she does not flinch.

“It would be foolish to look beyond Miss Wolfe,” I reply simply. “To lose her heart through distraction would be so anticlimactic, do you not think?”

At those words, Avalon turns to look at the World Bombshells’ Championship draped across the arm of the chair sat in the far corner. An overhead lamp picks out the unmistakable crimson sheen of blood, scrawled in a shape across the faceplate. Her blood.

Her fists relax and I retrieve the title to return and place it on her lap. She looks down, watching her own reflection in the dirty gold.

“Would you like to meet the real Amber Ryan?” I offer. “The one who would give up everything – her husband, her gumshoe, you – just to have this again? Simply to be reunited. Would you like to strip away the cocksureness, the acerbic wit and venomous spite and meet the brutal, violent little carnival girl who would claw out your insides to take back what has been taken from hers?

Avalon hefts the Championship up in her hands, squeezing the sweat-stained leather. Eventually, she looks up.

She nods, and then I do too.

“I will show you nothing but truth, but in the meantime it is necessary to deal with another falsehood that has crept up on us while we have both been distracted and looking elsewhere.”

“Krystal?”

“The Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing,” I clarify. “A potential heartbreak in the shape of chicken soup for the soul.”

Blinking, the younger woman laughs. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

And I laugh too, because I am not sure. There is something refreshing about the clarity of purpose our relationship shares. There is nothing more to gain to use against my Resplendent Hurricane when it comes to her former protege: that came at the end of a plastic index and forefinger crushing the soft tissue of her palette, until the Referee intervened to stop it all. From that point on, there was no further utility. No reason to engage. No purpose.

And yet, there was an eagerness and a hunger that was difficult to ignore. A passion for something more – a yearning for greatness in whatever ambiguous shape it took and something altogether darker burning in the pit of her gut. For all the qualities that Avalon seemed to share with Miss Ryan, they were nothing alike. Not really.

Avalon harboured a deep sense of injustice that demanded retribution. Vengeance. She thirsted for what had been denied; an equaliser against all the wrongs inflicted her way. She would not simply write off the agonies she had endured because the world was undeniably, unsalvagably fucked … So to speak.

That was not the way it was going to be.

In some stranger way still, that desire for more found more commonality with Miss Wolfe than Miss Ryan. After all, the former had apparently simply lucked into a World Championship opportunity by virtue of being in the wrong place at the right time. And yet …

Krystal stank of dishonesty. Of another face worn over the front to beguile and obfuscate. A mask. There was a hunger, like Avalon’s, but it was impure. Twisted. Grotesque and self-centered. It was transactional, rather than transformational.

From my vantage point I can see the way Miss Blackthorn covets the title she holds. Her mind whirls with the possibilities, with the kudos. With the recognition. The self-worth. She sees the potential not in simply being Champion but how being Champion might give her something worth building upon. A foundation from which all the terrible wrongs that have been visited upon her can be compartmentalised, if not quite forgotten. Not yet.

Krystal, on the other hand … She is engaged only as far as her success can be expedited and fast-tracked. A title change in a few days, and reaping the rewards thereafter.

Turning away, the plastic fingers of my prosthetic whir as the wind flings a smattering of rain against the glass to crack like the staccato beat of a machine gun. It is necessary to deal with a Wolfe before turning my attention towards the Weather.


[The Rapture]
 
 
When we look past your exploits at the Hero Academy, beyond Cassie and her apparent addiction to pornography and other whimsical aspects of your jovial little life, what carries the weight of you? What will meet me underneath the bright overhead lights on Sunday?

I am not your opportunity, Krystal, but I am your salvation and your education. In your desire to elevate yourself, to feed the Wolfe that promises your greatest works, you have mistaken the SCW Bombshells’ Championship for some guarantee of greatness but in your fervent, blind hope, you have made a terrible mistake. This title does not bestow credibility, or success, or fill the emptiness that lingers where the noise and cameras are shut outside. Instead, it is a simple anvil. A fire-tested weight against which comers and their dreams are smashed and dashed to pieces on an altar of their own misplaced sense of worth and ego.

Polished brass, gold plating and precious stones on a sweat-stained leather backing are every bit as murderous as a hammer when it is wielded by those who know its toxic, attractive power. Amber Ryan understood it, even if she could not resist it. Roxi Johnson survived it, although who can say how long even a Superhero would have resisted its corrosive effects. I will wield it like a scalpel, cutting the veil that clouds the judgement of so many of those that call this division and company a professional home.

What would you do with it? Thank your friends and wives for making your victory possible before slowly, inexorably, poisoning every last one of those relationships as you progressively surrender every aspect of your life to defend it and retain it.

Until you begin to starve one Wolfe and feed the other, despite your better judgement. Despite the parables that are wailing and screaming at you to heed their wisdom.

I do not think you can handle what you would become, Krystal. It is the worst-kept secret in all of SCW, understood by a startling few and shared only between those at the top of their respective divisions. After all, who would willingly contract the most virulent cancer imaginable, one that effortlessly crosses from mind to grey matter and finally, hollows out your bones and turns your skin a sickly purple?

I do not think you are made to survive that, and I will make sure you never suffer such a burden.

On the subjects of burdens, how does Makayla feel about the one you would so willingly and blindly inflict on her? What does one of your wives think of the idea that you would give up so much, endure such agony, for the chance to suffer an even greater one once the Bombshells’ Championship had riddled you with its poisonous obsession?

It is so very important to me that you understand what is waiting for you on Sunday, Krystal. I am not interested in healthy competition. I am neither piqued or pleased by the idea of honest battle and there is no valour for you in trying either. What you have done to get here is irrelevant, and the story you tell gives me no reason to turn the page and look for a sudden twist in which the Girl who cried Wolfe comes good, at long, long last. At Climax Control, I will inflict every modicum of pain available to my thorn-painted hand; extract innumerable agonies in exchange for every moment you spend in my presence.

You should never have come here, as if this were ever some simple athletic competition. As if regardless of what happens on Sunday, that you will return home to be with your family on a Monday morning sore but none the worse for your trials and tribulations. I promise, Krystal, you will carry the hurt I give you for the rest of your long days, until the golden summer of your life turns to autumnal red. When your daughter comes of age to make her own, independent decisions, she will have no better role model than what becomes of you as a result of the poor choices that led you to cross my frosted path.

Such a powerful exercise in could have, should have not.

It smacks of such incredible delusion or cynicism to cross that path, given all the bridges I have burnt to ashes and carbon, with your polyamorous trifecta in tow and Rachel so newly recovering from her recent time in hospital. You have loaded up the most precious things in your life that shine so much more brightly than a title belt, and driven them into a land riven with bandits, cutthroats and terrible, formless things that move silently in the dark.

In spirit – because they live through you and you, them, and pain delivered to one is as surely felt by the other(s) – you have brought them to me. You might as well have asked them to step into the ring likewise and share the coming fate physically. The fallout will just as certainly be theirs to cope with.

Did you make this choice implicitly, foolishly, because you are so blinded by the potential for glory in some euphemistic dash “Out West” that you have driven your loved ones and your entire future into a graveyard stretched out under a hot yellow sun?

Worse, is this some deliberate and measured act?

Have you arranged your harem in some elaborate opening gambit, seeking to encircle me and dominate the board?

There is no new beginning for you here, Krystal. Only your end. Do you know how many sing-song voices have predicted their success at my expense? Have you taken a moment from dreaming your dreams to look at the litany of the hopeful, the deluded and the desperate and extracted the trends which paint an irresistible reality? Their names roll into the past, becoming ever older and more forgotten but together they represent the natural order of things.

They come for me, and they leave with wounds that will last a lifetime.

Last week, my Resplendent Hurricane found the strength to stand unaided, at least physically, and challenge me with a strength of will that had been until now as unwilling as her broken body. Talk turns to what I will do, and whether I will accept. Digital and real-world whispers vie with each other to divine my intent and my mood; what am I thinking behind this composite face of mine?

Rest assured that any notion of vengeance and more likely, salvation, on Miss Ryan’s part is furthest from my mind. What else is there left to prove? I took her career, I took her health and via convoluted engagement with a Superhero I took her heart. There is no part left for her to play in my game, or any other. Why dwell on shadows when there is nothing walking in them?

I do not fear Amber Ryan. I have already broken her into pieces she uses to continue to hurt herself with.

My attention – my sole focus – is on you, Miss Wolfe. After picking free the fleece you use to dress yourself in a form more benign and gentile, the slavering, furious hunger underneath that can only belong to the chomping maw of a predator bares those pointed teeth. Happenstance or coincidence or deliberate premeditation aside, I will not be caught by surprise looking in one direction only to be ensnared and cut down by something that stalks me from the opposite.

There is a curious trend that is becoming more apparent to me. It began with Miss Johnson, and it grows stronger with you. A desire to foster talent, train and support some new generation. My Songbird did likewise, and even my Resplendent Hurricane chose a protege before she grew bored with Miss Blackthorn and left her for a new and brutal teacher in her place. What is it you fear?

To be forgotten? To surrender to time and inevitable entropy and have your name and your deeds pass from living memory? Is it purely egotistical? A hunger to be responsible for even more; to be able to claim glory in another name for your own?

Why do you put so much of yourself into someone else? Functional immortality, or jealousy and a greed for success?

Perhaps that is something I should explore. I have so many wonderful things I could show a prospective pupil – so many choice miseries and careful suffering cultivated across years of observing the very worst that all this world and everyone on it could imagine to inflict on each other … Would that not make for worthy lessons? Would I experience that same intoxicating high in living vicariously through someone else?

Could I have a legacy that would outlast me? I must admit, the idea that somehow everything I have worked for could be perpetuated, be given a life all of its own to grow and develop is an enticing one.

Such things are for a future it is not yet time to see. Firstly, it is necessary to put an end to your opportunity before it has in itself a chance, ironically, to become something more tangible and concrete. Despite the best efforts of so many, I am still World Bombshells’ Champion. Although stronger and better women than you have tried, none have been able to take from me what they do not understand would eventually defeat them as surely as I did. And have.

In some strange way, I will protect you from yourself, Krystal. In an altogether more practical one, I will disabuse you. Clear away all the delusions and misconceptions that have combined such to make you believe that you simply have to work hard. Be confident. Be persistent … And what you desire more than anything will simply be.

It is getting late in the arch-time of everything I have done in this company, and elsewhere. The hours are beginning to dwindle and even the minutes must be jealously guarded, used well for there are so few of them left. With each passing day I become only more focused on ensuring all of the things I have worked so hard to deliver will come to pass. It is not a matter of confidence, or persistence, but simply belief.

With belief, I have retired a legend, defeated a superhero and conquered a dozen faces who would have given anything to stop me and gave everything trying. There are no parables required, no euphemisms or metaphors. I am no spirit animal in twain, or Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing. With the deepest irony that cuts almost to and through the bone, I exude absolute honesty even as I cover my face and hide it from the world.

Everyone else is a liar, yourself included. Whether directed out into the world or to yourself, the truth is twisted and misrepresented to better fit the biases and hopes and dreams – and nightmares – of those that speak it. But I do not need to change its shape to make use of reality. I promised I would change you, for the better, and I will.

I will save you from a fate worse than victory on Sunday. I will save you from the burden and the agony of reigning supreme at some imagined summit. My burden will be to continue to dash those, like you, against the anvil of this World Championship.

I am the way and the truth and through it, I will deliver the salvation promised.

Welcome to the Rapture, Krystal. It will be so much more than you ever thought possible.


D̶o n̶ot b̶e fri̶ght̴e̵n̵ed. M̷i̵n̵e i̵s t̴he̵ la̴st vo̷i̵c̶e yo̴u w̶ill eve̴r h̸ear.