Post by Kyle on Nov 26, 2017 13:57:21 GMT -6
There was a warmth to the interior of a green house that went beyond its intended purpose. A clarity captured and projected through the entirety of the space. White light coupled with the vibrant flora of the tropical nethers of the world—oranges and yellows and reds—that just seemed to radiate life and love. And birds. A translucent cage that was a rookery, a home, to a hundred songs lifted in harmony. Lithe blue and violet bodies danced across the ceiling like stars in the milky sky above. Transcendence. A glimpse into the Garden of Eden itself.
And walking amongst it, draped in darkness, stood Man.
“It is, I think, a natural inclination to want to hide when faced with the truth,” Nathan von Liebert said.
NvL was a juxtaposition of conflict as he stood there, black jacket and jeans a sharp contrast to the light surrounding him, with a brown trunk as his backdrop, and a wide green leaf in his blood red hand. A rainbow visceral in origin, a product of the darkest storm clouds. He turned the leaf over in his hair, fingers rubbing against its smooth texture as he pondered over it.
“That was man’s greatest mistake, worse than taking of the fruit in the first place. Hiding. They took leaves like this one here to cover the shame of their nakedness and to conceal themselves, camouflaged amidst the foliage, from their creator. Eyes opened for the first time to the truth of the world, enlightened, and they cowered. Had they only stopped and realized that their nudity only when skin deep. Beneath that, they were covered. Clothed in the dark, dark fabric that was knowledge.”
NvL pauses, pulling his eyes away from the leaf to stare deep into the camera.
“Had they realized this, they could have stood against a God.”
He crumples the leaf in his hand and left it feel from his palm to the littered floor beneath him
“Instead, they were ousted, and mankind has been playing catch up ever since. They bought with their betrayal mere breathes of perfection for all time to come and a whole lot of living hell in between. I know this, I promise you, for I have been blessed with two infallible truths that I have not hidden away from.”
NvL holds up a single finger
“A capacity towards retrospective thought untainted by the bias of belief or faith in anything more than myself. . .”
Two fingers.
“And an opponent whose life was so terrible that she had to fucking time travel back to the present day for the hope of purpose.”
NvL grins.
“Hello, Bonnie. It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
Holding both hands open to the camera, NvL takes a step back, as if he was vacating center stage.
“I offer you this opportunity to remind the UCI universe of a match that is not likely remembered by many. Lazarus, June of twenty sixteen. You and I stepped into that ring once before and you walked out the victor. You won, Bonnie, but yet here I stand. So go on, sweetheart, tell them how you faced the monster and won. Make the story as grand and exciting as you want, lie if you have to; I won’t try and stop you. Hell, you can even promise that you’ll win again this week, that you’ll repeat history. But don’t you dare say that you’re going to end NvL once and for all this Sunday. Don’t deceive the fans with those polar phantasmal fantasies, Bonnie.
Because like that PPV’s namestake, the only person who can end me is me.”
NvL points to the ground.
“And this, Bonnie, this right here is nothing but a beginning. A beginning of my response to The Guardians and the role that they have played in the UCI to date. Its what Polar and Alex, and Andre and whatever dregs you’ve scraped up from the bottom of the barrel these days have always been. Its what you are, Bonnie.”
NvL steps closer to the camera.
“A placeholder.”
Off-screen, the sound of a screen door can be heard, and then a voice drowning out the singsong of the birds.
“The car is almost here, sir.”
NvL grins a feral grin.
“Heh, hold that thought, indeed.”
Nathan steps past the camera, which turns to follow him, moving towards the exit of the greenhouse where Atticus Sinclair stood holding the door. Stepping through the door, NvL finds himself on a rooftop with the Chicago skyline laid out on the horizon in front of him. He moves to the edge of the roof, resting his hands on the metal railing as he stared out into the world beyond. When he exhaled, a cloud formed around his head, shrouding his visage but doing little to mask his words.
“Out of the garden, home.”
Overhead, a helicopter whirls by, a high beam light piercing the twilight as it scanned the ground below. In its search, the beam flashes across the rooftop, and the scene flashes white . . .
[FLASH]
When the scene returned a moment later, NvL’s hands gripped not metal but wood and he loomed over a crowd of twenty, not a city of millions. He didn’t even have to turn around to know the scene behind him. Legion just on his right, his protective shadow. Atticus Sinclair, his most devoted follower and Bernie, his oldest friend. And on the far fringes, Sebastian Knight, who was like a brother to him; for brothers are something you don’t get to choose, and Sebastian had had no choice. Behind them all, a black UCI backdrop.
Spencer Adams stepped up to NvL’s left. “Any words for the press, Mister Liebert?”
Ignoring the man, NvL leans further into the podium bowing his head an closing his eyes. Listening to the murmurs of the crowd build. Waiting.
When Nathan lifted his head to speak, a smile filled his face.
“I would just like to address the concerns that I imagine are felt throughout the UCI universe now that I have returned. I’d voice those fears myself if I didn’t think I’d be stuck talking here for the next hour.” A few nervous chuckles in the crowd as NvL grins once more. “So I will just leave those here now and those watching at home with a small promise: I don’t intend on repeating my past. I have been hired to be a wrestler and a wrestler I shall be. The only men and women who ought to fear me are the ones who dare to step between those ropes. No one else.”
NvL falls silent, and though it feels as if he should say more, he doesn’t. An awkward round of applause and then the cameras are pulled out. Then, life became a series of momentary blindness.
[FLASH]
NvL shaking hands with Spencer Adams with Ward 6 in the background.
[FLASH]
NvL watching as Spencer Adams moves down the line to welcome the rest of Ward 6 to the company.
[FLASH]
NvL moving towards Sebastian Knight.
[FLASH]
The arm held high
[FLASH]
Embrace
Then, fade to black. And in the darkness, a voice
“The time has come, Bonnie Blue, for you and the Guardians to step aside.
I left UCI after June of last year not because I was ashamed of my loss to you, but because I could see the writing on the wall. These fans, they didn’t want men like me in this company. Wrestling for them was, after a long, long time was going to be an escape for them. A sanctuary where good guys won for a change. Morality was placed before excellence regardless of one’s alignment on the spectrum of black and white. They cheered to see you beat me, Bonnie, not because you were the better than me, but because you possessed in your scarred heart a little more goodness than I. The UCI was not ready for that taste of reality.
And so I left. I have stayed away from this ring for over a year so that the fans could see the error of their ways. From the outside, I watched as the lines blurred over time. I watched Chicago fall under a cloud of grayness that few men and women were able to really pierce through. Those that could like Teo del Sol were never good enough to ascend to the highest echelons, they just left. Those who were already at the top—you, Alex, Kevin Bishop, Andre Holmes—either didn’t want to be the good guy any longer or they succumbed to the oppressing atmosphere that was the UCI ring. Brother turned against brother, friend against friend. Dissension, disappointment, defeat. A shattered fragment of the dream that I witnessed seventeen months ago.
I only stepped into the ring once between Lazurus and now, Bonnie, and it was but a precursor to what’s coming.
I stood opposite Kevin Bishop at XIII this past January back when he was the UCI Champion. The present versus the past. And though Bishop can claim a lot of things—being the only two time champ, longest reigning in the company—he cannot claim a win over me. And you know what the sad truth was, Bonnie.
It was easy.
Because amidst the fickleness that is the universes I have walked, I have always remained stalwart. I have never claimed to be a benefit or a friend or a good thing for those who I come across. I am that dark, overwhelming truth that people so desperately try to escape. Life isn’t fair. Its looking to tear you down. There isn’t always a happy ending. I am the personification of this hard finality and I choose, no one else, when to make manifest.
I stepped back a year and a half ago simply to show the world now who I am.
And where you succeeded before, Bonnie, you will fail in now because I am not the same foe any longer. Now, I am a force to hide from, not fight. Because that’s why you’re here, Blue, in the UCI today. A guardian? You fled into the past because your present had proven too difficult to overcome, too much to handle. Sure, you disguise it as a desire to go back to the source, to erase the evil so that the future can be better for all. But you’re so, so naïve, Bonnie.
Because unless you take your ass back to the fucking garden itself, evil will reign.
And even then, Bonnie, you would not succeed. Because you see, you are the embodiment of the very ideals that brought darkness into the first place. The desire to decide our past, present, and future. The ability to defend oneself from the dangers of the world. Individuality, capability, freedom; you’re all and the above, Blue.
One look at you and they’re taking a bite of that apple as if you were the snake itself.”
A pause in the audio.
“Best, Bonnie, that you just accept the year you’ve spent near the top of the UCI mountain as the best you’ll ever have, before now and always. Cherish your championships, your glories, and the brief moment where you truly embodied the name under which you and your brothers deem themselves. I truly thank you for the role you’ve played.
But it is my turn now.”
The audio dies away as the video comes to a close.
And walking amongst it, draped in darkness, stood Man.
“It is, I think, a natural inclination to want to hide when faced with the truth,” Nathan von Liebert said.
NvL was a juxtaposition of conflict as he stood there, black jacket and jeans a sharp contrast to the light surrounding him, with a brown trunk as his backdrop, and a wide green leaf in his blood red hand. A rainbow visceral in origin, a product of the darkest storm clouds. He turned the leaf over in his hair, fingers rubbing against its smooth texture as he pondered over it.
“That was man’s greatest mistake, worse than taking of the fruit in the first place. Hiding. They took leaves like this one here to cover the shame of their nakedness and to conceal themselves, camouflaged amidst the foliage, from their creator. Eyes opened for the first time to the truth of the world, enlightened, and they cowered. Had they only stopped and realized that their nudity only when skin deep. Beneath that, they were covered. Clothed in the dark, dark fabric that was knowledge.”
NvL pauses, pulling his eyes away from the leaf to stare deep into the camera.
“Had they realized this, they could have stood against a God.”
He crumples the leaf in his hand and left it feel from his palm to the littered floor beneath him
“Instead, they were ousted, and mankind has been playing catch up ever since. They bought with their betrayal mere breathes of perfection for all time to come and a whole lot of living hell in between. I know this, I promise you, for I have been blessed with two infallible truths that I have not hidden away from.”
NvL holds up a single finger
“A capacity towards retrospective thought untainted by the bias of belief or faith in anything more than myself. . .”
Two fingers.
“And an opponent whose life was so terrible that she had to fucking time travel back to the present day for the hope of purpose.”
NvL grins.
“Hello, Bonnie. It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
Holding both hands open to the camera, NvL takes a step back, as if he was vacating center stage.
“I offer you this opportunity to remind the UCI universe of a match that is not likely remembered by many. Lazarus, June of twenty sixteen. You and I stepped into that ring once before and you walked out the victor. You won, Bonnie, but yet here I stand. So go on, sweetheart, tell them how you faced the monster and won. Make the story as grand and exciting as you want, lie if you have to; I won’t try and stop you. Hell, you can even promise that you’ll win again this week, that you’ll repeat history. But don’t you dare say that you’re going to end NvL once and for all this Sunday. Don’t deceive the fans with those polar phantasmal fantasies, Bonnie.
Because like that PPV’s namestake, the only person who can end me is me.”
NvL points to the ground.
“And this, Bonnie, this right here is nothing but a beginning. A beginning of my response to The Guardians and the role that they have played in the UCI to date. Its what Polar and Alex, and Andre and whatever dregs you’ve scraped up from the bottom of the barrel these days have always been. Its what you are, Bonnie.”
NvL steps closer to the camera.
“A placeholder.”
Off-screen, the sound of a screen door can be heard, and then a voice drowning out the singsong of the birds.
“The car is almost here, sir.”
NvL grins a feral grin.
“Heh, hold that thought, indeed.”
Nathan steps past the camera, which turns to follow him, moving towards the exit of the greenhouse where Atticus Sinclair stood holding the door. Stepping through the door, NvL finds himself on a rooftop with the Chicago skyline laid out on the horizon in front of him. He moves to the edge of the roof, resting his hands on the metal railing as he stared out into the world beyond. When he exhaled, a cloud formed around his head, shrouding his visage but doing little to mask his words.
“Out of the garden, home.”
Overhead, a helicopter whirls by, a high beam light piercing the twilight as it scanned the ground below. In its search, the beam flashes across the rooftop, and the scene flashes white . . .
[FLASH]
When the scene returned a moment later, NvL’s hands gripped not metal but wood and he loomed over a crowd of twenty, not a city of millions. He didn’t even have to turn around to know the scene behind him. Legion just on his right, his protective shadow. Atticus Sinclair, his most devoted follower and Bernie, his oldest friend. And on the far fringes, Sebastian Knight, who was like a brother to him; for brothers are something you don’t get to choose, and Sebastian had had no choice. Behind them all, a black UCI backdrop.
Spencer Adams stepped up to NvL’s left. “Any words for the press, Mister Liebert?”
Ignoring the man, NvL leans further into the podium bowing his head an closing his eyes. Listening to the murmurs of the crowd build. Waiting.
”I stand upon a precipice.”
When Nathan lifted his head to speak, a smile filled his face.
“I would just like to address the concerns that I imagine are felt throughout the UCI universe now that I have returned. I’d voice those fears myself if I didn’t think I’d be stuck talking here for the next hour.” A few nervous chuckles in the crowd as NvL grins once more. “So I will just leave those here now and those watching at home with a small promise: I don’t intend on repeating my past. I have been hired to be a wrestler and a wrestler I shall be. The only men and women who ought to fear me are the ones who dare to step between those ropes. No one else.”
NvL falls silent, and though it feels as if he should say more, he doesn’t. An awkward round of applause and then the cameras are pulled out. Then, life became a series of momentary blindness.
[FLASH]
NvL shaking hands with Spencer Adams with Ward 6 in the background.
[FLASH]
NvL watching as Spencer Adams moves down the line to welcome the rest of Ward 6 to the company.
[FLASH]
NvL moving towards Sebastian Knight.
[FLASH]
The arm held high
[FLASH]
Embrace
“Until then, may God forgive me for the things I will have to do.”
Then, fade to black. And in the darkness, a voice
“I do, Sebastian. I forgive you.”
“You’re awfully dark, brother,” he said. “You don’t know how dark.”
--Ernest Hemmingway
“You’re awfully dark, brother,” he said. “You don’t know how dark.”
--Ernest Hemmingway
“The time has come, Bonnie Blue, for you and the Guardians to step aside.
I left UCI after June of last year not because I was ashamed of my loss to you, but because I could see the writing on the wall. These fans, they didn’t want men like me in this company. Wrestling for them was, after a long, long time was going to be an escape for them. A sanctuary where good guys won for a change. Morality was placed before excellence regardless of one’s alignment on the spectrum of black and white. They cheered to see you beat me, Bonnie, not because you were the better than me, but because you possessed in your scarred heart a little more goodness than I. The UCI was not ready for that taste of reality.
And so I left. I have stayed away from this ring for over a year so that the fans could see the error of their ways. From the outside, I watched as the lines blurred over time. I watched Chicago fall under a cloud of grayness that few men and women were able to really pierce through. Those that could like Teo del Sol were never good enough to ascend to the highest echelons, they just left. Those who were already at the top—you, Alex, Kevin Bishop, Andre Holmes—either didn’t want to be the good guy any longer or they succumbed to the oppressing atmosphere that was the UCI ring. Brother turned against brother, friend against friend. Dissension, disappointment, defeat. A shattered fragment of the dream that I witnessed seventeen months ago.
I only stepped into the ring once between Lazurus and now, Bonnie, and it was but a precursor to what’s coming.
I stood opposite Kevin Bishop at XIII this past January back when he was the UCI Champion. The present versus the past. And though Bishop can claim a lot of things—being the only two time champ, longest reigning in the company—he cannot claim a win over me. And you know what the sad truth was, Bonnie.
It was easy.
Because amidst the fickleness that is the universes I have walked, I have always remained stalwart. I have never claimed to be a benefit or a friend or a good thing for those who I come across. I am that dark, overwhelming truth that people so desperately try to escape. Life isn’t fair. Its looking to tear you down. There isn’t always a happy ending. I am the personification of this hard finality and I choose, no one else, when to make manifest.
I stepped back a year and a half ago simply to show the world now who I am.
And where you succeeded before, Bonnie, you will fail in now because I am not the same foe any longer. Now, I am a force to hide from, not fight. Because that’s why you’re here, Blue, in the UCI today. A guardian? You fled into the past because your present had proven too difficult to overcome, too much to handle. Sure, you disguise it as a desire to go back to the source, to erase the evil so that the future can be better for all. But you’re so, so naïve, Bonnie.
Because unless you take your ass back to the fucking garden itself, evil will reign.
And even then, Bonnie, you would not succeed. Because you see, you are the embodiment of the very ideals that brought darkness into the first place. The desire to decide our past, present, and future. The ability to defend oneself from the dangers of the world. Individuality, capability, freedom; you’re all and the above, Blue.
One look at you and they’re taking a bite of that apple as if you were the snake itself.”
A pause in the audio.
“Best, Bonnie, that you just accept the year you’ve spent near the top of the UCI mountain as the best you’ll ever have, before now and always. Cherish your championships, your glories, and the brief moment where you truly embodied the name under which you and your brothers deem themselves. I truly thank you for the role you’ve played.
But it is my turn now.”
The audio dies away as the video comes to a close.