Post by Cupcake on Feb 24, 2017 22:27:53 GMT
Late Summer 1879
It had been Legacy that warned them that Barabbas was coming, and far sooner than they had expected at that. It sent the remaining townsfolk into a tizzy, they’d been working with them as best they could and even so it wasn’t going to be enough. Wulf had a great idea, though now Aurora worried he might not have time to get his traps set - bunkers covered over with tents and wagons, hiding him and a few of the miners that had some former military experience, letting them form a horseshoe shaped trap that would make the dip in the valley into a killing floor for the mercenaries under the payroll of the Robber Baron himself. Rori’s heavy boots thudded as she walked on the wooden sidewalk that ran along the front of the saloon and all the way to the Sheriff’s empty office slash jail, her dark brows drawn down as she was lost in thought, her amazing green eyes caught by the shimmer of sunlight off of the silver coin she always wore. Masaru walked with her, he kept her from mishaps with delicate touches to her elbow or her arm, acting much as her eyes would if she wasn’t so deeply entranced.
“I’m fine.” She shot him a look, a hint of a wry grin. “You know, we’re going to die doing this, don’t you? You could go, you don’t owe me anything, not like the others.”
Masaru Inoue gave her the gravest of looks, pushing her hat back from her face and he pressed a kiss to the center of her forehead before grinning like a whimsical child. “I know, Lady Rori. I know.”
“Well we can put some of these folk guarding some doorways. Hard to miss a target in a door. And with the traps Wulf set, that scatter cannon and dynamite pit? We’re going to be able to even up those odds, a little.” She took a deep breath, feeling it in her gut that the time they had was running out, a scant few grains of sand in the hourglass. “I just need to make it to the end, to him. That’s all. Put a stop to this, keep him from ever doing it again. I just need to make it to the end.”
“I am thankful. Does that surprise any of you? In fact I am thrilled that I am facing Anastasia Starling, and should I defeat that darling who makes me think of Blackbird Song I will have the possibility of facing either Cassius Reed or Bailey Kaitlin Huff. While all of you are fresh to me, none of you lack the skill, the fire, the passion I always long to see. I fear no words from you three because I know in the depths of my heart I won’t have to sit through another recital littered with tattered quotes from some dead American poet paraded out as if no one ever was touched by them and applied them to themselves. There is no hubris here but my very own, and I stand here today telling you that yes, I know exactly what I’ve done here. I knew when I asked Slaine if I could take that same path that my beloved had attempted before, if I could put my title on the line not just at the end of the tournament… but in every match I competed in, that in some eyes I was inviting the Fates to come knock me on my ass.
In the interests of being as open a book as a competitor like me can be? I’ve never been on my surest footing when it comes to situations where I have fought more than one match in a night. This isn’t saying I can’t, or that I haven’t had success doing it - but that on the scales it’s hard to say where to put the feather and where to put the heart.”
Rori stepped closer to the camera, dressed simply today. None of the usual gothic style fripperies, just jeans, low heeled dark boots, a Holly Chainsaw t-shirt and her hair braided back from her face MMA style. The gloss on her lips gave them shine, but she had forgone any other makeup.
“For those of you that don’t know what I mean, in ancient Egypt they believed that after you died, your heart was weighed against the feather owned by the goddess of truth. If the heart weighed more? Then you had been more wicked than good and I promise you few fates were worse. In things like this, just like that you really can’t tip the scales in your own favor unless you are what you say you are. I am, and I own that with every fiber of my being. I am responsible for everything I do, and I promise you I know the outcomes, the consequences, the projections that come with it.
Bailey? She understands my vision about things like this, or by gods she best considering I have a hand in training her. I can't underestimate Bailey in the least bit as again I am well aware of what she can do. If you just give her an inch? This girl is the exception that proves the rule, she’s that kernel of truth at the bottom of every cliche. If she can get you in a submission position? Not good for you. She’s just one of those who is more than adept, she’s got a natural talent and you can’t dismiss it. The one thing she lacks is experience, but as she’s shown throughout this tournament? She’s not afraid of jumping into the deep end to get it. That’s admirable in a day and age where many people just want things handed to them.
I think that pleases me the most about the possibility of facing her, or Cassius Reed because neither of them ever expected people to give them anything because of their names - or even despite them. A name is power, but both of them have managed to distinguish themselves apart from the rest of their families…”
Rori grinned for a moment, damn near cheekily before she let that grin warm slightly.
“I know it’s expected that I now say that Anastasia Starling is the opposite of that. The problem is, that while I am many wicked things? I have never in my career been a damn dirty fucking liar, and to me that is what anyone who points at Ana and says she only has a career because of whom she is related to is. That girl? I’ve seen how she started. I’ve seen how she was treated. Berated. Used as a tool, treated as less than a pawn. The thing is, no matter what she endured? She rose above. She kept her eyes up to the sky and instead of becoming bitter, beaten down mentally and spiritually, she took fucking flight! She went from having one of the worst records to being the one you know will put on the best matches. Who will do things that no one thinks she can do in that ring. Her daredevil moves captivate the fans in a way I have seen few others able to, and she is one of the sweetest souls I have ever met.
I can without irony say, that as a wrestler I can respect her, Cassius, and Bailey. I see in them the future of wrestling, of what it can become and my heart aches with how happy I am that I get to be a part of that even in some small way. I get what I always so desperately want, as I said to darling Sophie… I get a true challenge. I get to just be who I am in that ring, with people like this. I can transcend the reputation I have, earned and justified or no. I can compete with those that see this for the importance it has, who know just what it means to be the Iron King or even the very first Iron King, to be the Phoenix Wrestling Rebirth Champion. This means something. I have what I wanted more than anything, right here in front of me.”
Her amazing green eyes shimmered slightly and her smile blossomed to a thing of rare and almost vulnerable beauty from a woman not known to show weakness in any form.
“For that? I simply say this. Mulțumesc..”
Late Summer 1879
They died like gods.
The Archbishop had come back, the sun shining off of the golden coat of his rare Russian horse, bringing them the warning that Bobby Barabbas had brought along with his men the devil’s breath and eyes went wide as Rori and Masaru ran, shouting at the others to get inside, that Barabbas had a gatling gun. Without care, he gave the order even when his eye-patched servant questioned him, because despite all that had fallen they still had men there. In response he lit a thin cheroot wrapped in black paper, drawing the fragrant smoke flavored with cloves deep into his lungs.
The bullets flew, indiscriminate to who they struck, mowing men down like wheat to lay as they fell in the dust of the street, the smoke and dirt flung into the air from the earlier explosions set off by Wulf and Gordon still lingering with their scent of death. Gordon had taken out Lucian, drilling him with a tight pattern of his remaining bullets and a grin touched his face as he fell into an open casket. A stray bullet caught his side and he swore, signaling that he was fine as Darien called out to check on him. Rori and Masaru back to back picked off more of the remaining hired guns as Legacy got the women and children out through the fields as Barabbas’ men reloaded while he exhaled the drag he’d taken with a nearly orgasmic expression.
Fury settled in next to Rori and Maz, his voice low and urgent. “We have got to do something about that gun.” Rori nodded, her gaze going to him as she wiped some of the sweat off her face with the tail of her dark serape.
“You’re shot, Gordon. We’re… square, on the horse. You don’t owe me a thing.”
“Well, you owe me something.” He levered himself to his feet, whistling for his horse. At her raised brow, he grinned. “Some cover.” Then he ran to get that horse and Rori and Masaru emptied bullets into Barabbas’ men that tried to stop him.
Down the street, Wulf was dragging Mia’s brother who had been shot in the leg to cover when an arrow struck him in his upper back. Urging the boy into the darkness of the shot up general store he turned and faced Bobby’s chief assistant and drew his hatchet into one hand, a familiar sharpened antler in the other and charged him. A man stepped in the way and was taken down with that antler, and then a second before another arrow struck him in the chest, and another… but he still kept walking in implacable fashion toward his target. Two more arrows struck him before he dropped to a knee and when the man loomed over him to take his life he stabbed him with that antler before he looked up at the heavens.
Gordon got on his horse as from the bell tower of the shell of the church The Archbishop was joined by Legacy and they used their long rifles to pick off his pursuers, going towards where Barabbas had that gatling gun. They managed to clear his path and kill his pursuers before the gun took them out, the two men that once were clergy of the church dying in its embrace.
His horse shied and threw him at the sound of gunfire from the wagon that held the gatling gun, and he hit the ground hard, staring up at the sky. Yet he managed to get up to his knees, stood up and kept going. They shot him again, and he dropped back to his knees. He drew out a cheroot, put it to his lips and struggled to strike a match to light it, when the gunner got down and struck one for him, as if to give the dying man his final pleasure in life. After Gordon got a puff or two, he raised his gun to end it when Fury pitched forward onto his face. The men laughed, and the gunner turned back with a small smirk… when his aide’s eyes suddenly went wide. “DYNAMITE!”
He took out the gun in the explosion that killed him and the men on the wagon, the look on Barabbas’ face was thunderous as he realized he would need to enter the town. The few men that he had left fought with Hacaga and Masaru, as finally Bobby Barabbas stood in the shadow of the burned out shell of the church, and a small smile came to his face as he heard her voice for the first time in ages.
“Do you remember my sisters, Barabbas? Can you hear them crying out for your mercy? Tell me Bobby. Did you feel even an instant’s remorse for what you did, when you strung them up to die?”
Barabbas spoke, his voice warm and enrapturing as he turned around and his gaze focused on Aurora, eyes going to that silver coin which had for centuries before this rested with the company of twenty-nine others just like it. “If their bridegroom hadn’t wanted them shorn, he shouldn’t have made them sheep.”
Her face contorted in anger, teeth bared in a rictus as she chased him into what remained of the church, though was it a chase or him leading her on? Then all that was heard was the roar of gunfire.
“I have not always been the best me. And no worries, I don’t intend to burst out with some insipid apology that none of you would likely care to listen to. I allowed myself to not just be tempered by the things that I endured, but I also allowed them to sway me from the path I set for myself. It’s in fact one of the few regrets I’ve had, when looking back at my career. It’s why I work so hard with people like Aria Banks, for instance. I see in her, the type of person I wanted to be when I was her age.”
She exhaled through her nose, making a gentle huffing sound.
“Not that for an instant I think I’m somehow old, or some wise grizzled veteran. I am far too singular to be divested of my glories by taking up a label that doesn’t mean to me what it does to many of those that cling to it. I know going into this that my night may end earlier than I desire. This is the level of respect that I show you, Ana. To look at you, and know that you could be Rebirth Champion, even if you only hold it for half an hour, if you fall at the end of the night to Bailey Kaitlin Huff or to Cassius Reed.
I should feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I should by all rights be a roiling ball of nerves, sick at the heart at the thought of losing not only the Rebirth Championship but the chance to be another first, to be the very first Iron Queen PW has seen. Up until now only Kings ruled that Iron Throne, TJ Jones, Ja-Gi Kyung-Moon, The Great American Nightmare Gryphon. Any one of us could take the prizes at the end. Any one of us could hear our names shouted out and know that celebration is for us.
That’s nothing to fear, or shy away from. Whomever among us walks out with the glory and the gold, the titles involved? Will have done something amazing and that? Is something we all covet. All of us want our portion of history. All of us want to do something no one believes we can. As for myself? I don’t intend to let this slip from my fingers.”
Late Summer 1879
“Did you ever expect this, Bobby? With all the threads you wove?” There was a hitching sound, as she struggled to draw breath. Pink bubbles appeared on her lips, heralding her punctured lung.
His smile was the same. It was the exact same as it had been all those years ago, and his hand reached out to cup the silver coin that rested on her chest, blood blossoming up through the hole in his shirt. “Of course I did.”
“I should have known.” Her amazing green eyes stared into his as they lay across from each other on the dusty wooden floor.
It had been Legacy that warned them that Barabbas was coming, and far sooner than they had expected at that. It sent the remaining townsfolk into a tizzy, they’d been working with them as best they could and even so it wasn’t going to be enough. Wulf had a great idea, though now Aurora worried he might not have time to get his traps set - bunkers covered over with tents and wagons, hiding him and a few of the miners that had some former military experience, letting them form a horseshoe shaped trap that would make the dip in the valley into a killing floor for the mercenaries under the payroll of the Robber Baron himself. Rori’s heavy boots thudded as she walked on the wooden sidewalk that ran along the front of the saloon and all the way to the Sheriff’s empty office slash jail, her dark brows drawn down as she was lost in thought, her amazing green eyes caught by the shimmer of sunlight off of the silver coin she always wore. Masaru walked with her, he kept her from mishaps with delicate touches to her elbow or her arm, acting much as her eyes would if she wasn’t so deeply entranced.
“I’m fine.” She shot him a look, a hint of a wry grin. “You know, we’re going to die doing this, don’t you? You could go, you don’t owe me anything, not like the others.”
Masaru Inoue gave her the gravest of looks, pushing her hat back from her face and he pressed a kiss to the center of her forehead before grinning like a whimsical child. “I know, Lady Rori. I know.”
“Well we can put some of these folk guarding some doorways. Hard to miss a target in a door. And with the traps Wulf set, that scatter cannon and dynamite pit? We’re going to be able to even up those odds, a little.” She took a deep breath, feeling it in her gut that the time they had was running out, a scant few grains of sand in the hourglass. “I just need to make it to the end, to him. That’s all. Put a stop to this, keep him from ever doing it again. I just need to make it to the end.”
“I am thankful. Does that surprise any of you? In fact I am thrilled that I am facing Anastasia Starling, and should I defeat that darling who makes me think of Blackbird Song I will have the possibility of facing either Cassius Reed or Bailey Kaitlin Huff. While all of you are fresh to me, none of you lack the skill, the fire, the passion I always long to see. I fear no words from you three because I know in the depths of my heart I won’t have to sit through another recital littered with tattered quotes from some dead American poet paraded out as if no one ever was touched by them and applied them to themselves. There is no hubris here but my very own, and I stand here today telling you that yes, I know exactly what I’ve done here. I knew when I asked Slaine if I could take that same path that my beloved had attempted before, if I could put my title on the line not just at the end of the tournament… but in every match I competed in, that in some eyes I was inviting the Fates to come knock me on my ass.
In the interests of being as open a book as a competitor like me can be? I’ve never been on my surest footing when it comes to situations where I have fought more than one match in a night. This isn’t saying I can’t, or that I haven’t had success doing it - but that on the scales it’s hard to say where to put the feather and where to put the heart.”
Rori stepped closer to the camera, dressed simply today. None of the usual gothic style fripperies, just jeans, low heeled dark boots, a Holly Chainsaw t-shirt and her hair braided back from her face MMA style. The gloss on her lips gave them shine, but she had forgone any other makeup.
“For those of you that don’t know what I mean, in ancient Egypt they believed that after you died, your heart was weighed against the feather owned by the goddess of truth. If the heart weighed more? Then you had been more wicked than good and I promise you few fates were worse. In things like this, just like that you really can’t tip the scales in your own favor unless you are what you say you are. I am, and I own that with every fiber of my being. I am responsible for everything I do, and I promise you I know the outcomes, the consequences, the projections that come with it.
Bailey? She understands my vision about things like this, or by gods she best considering I have a hand in training her. I can't underestimate Bailey in the least bit as again I am well aware of what she can do. If you just give her an inch? This girl is the exception that proves the rule, she’s that kernel of truth at the bottom of every cliche. If she can get you in a submission position? Not good for you. She’s just one of those who is more than adept, she’s got a natural talent and you can’t dismiss it. The one thing she lacks is experience, but as she’s shown throughout this tournament? She’s not afraid of jumping into the deep end to get it. That’s admirable in a day and age where many people just want things handed to them.
I think that pleases me the most about the possibility of facing her, or Cassius Reed because neither of them ever expected people to give them anything because of their names - or even despite them. A name is power, but both of them have managed to distinguish themselves apart from the rest of their families…”
Rori grinned for a moment, damn near cheekily before she let that grin warm slightly.
“I know it’s expected that I now say that Anastasia Starling is the opposite of that. The problem is, that while I am many wicked things? I have never in my career been a damn dirty fucking liar, and to me that is what anyone who points at Ana and says she only has a career because of whom she is related to is. That girl? I’ve seen how she started. I’ve seen how she was treated. Berated. Used as a tool, treated as less than a pawn. The thing is, no matter what she endured? She rose above. She kept her eyes up to the sky and instead of becoming bitter, beaten down mentally and spiritually, she took fucking flight! She went from having one of the worst records to being the one you know will put on the best matches. Who will do things that no one thinks she can do in that ring. Her daredevil moves captivate the fans in a way I have seen few others able to, and she is one of the sweetest souls I have ever met.
I can without irony say, that as a wrestler I can respect her, Cassius, and Bailey. I see in them the future of wrestling, of what it can become and my heart aches with how happy I am that I get to be a part of that even in some small way. I get what I always so desperately want, as I said to darling Sophie… I get a true challenge. I get to just be who I am in that ring, with people like this. I can transcend the reputation I have, earned and justified or no. I can compete with those that see this for the importance it has, who know just what it means to be the Iron King or even the very first Iron King, to be the Phoenix Wrestling Rebirth Champion. This means something. I have what I wanted more than anything, right here in front of me.”
Her amazing green eyes shimmered slightly and her smile blossomed to a thing of rare and almost vulnerable beauty from a woman not known to show weakness in any form.
“For that? I simply say this. Mulțumesc..”
Late Summer 1879
They died like gods.
The Archbishop had come back, the sun shining off of the golden coat of his rare Russian horse, bringing them the warning that Bobby Barabbas had brought along with his men the devil’s breath and eyes went wide as Rori and Masaru ran, shouting at the others to get inside, that Barabbas had a gatling gun. Without care, he gave the order even when his eye-patched servant questioned him, because despite all that had fallen they still had men there. In response he lit a thin cheroot wrapped in black paper, drawing the fragrant smoke flavored with cloves deep into his lungs.
The bullets flew, indiscriminate to who they struck, mowing men down like wheat to lay as they fell in the dust of the street, the smoke and dirt flung into the air from the earlier explosions set off by Wulf and Gordon still lingering with their scent of death. Gordon had taken out Lucian, drilling him with a tight pattern of his remaining bullets and a grin touched his face as he fell into an open casket. A stray bullet caught his side and he swore, signaling that he was fine as Darien called out to check on him. Rori and Masaru back to back picked off more of the remaining hired guns as Legacy got the women and children out through the fields as Barabbas’ men reloaded while he exhaled the drag he’d taken with a nearly orgasmic expression.
Fury settled in next to Rori and Maz, his voice low and urgent. “We have got to do something about that gun.” Rori nodded, her gaze going to him as she wiped some of the sweat off her face with the tail of her dark serape.
“You’re shot, Gordon. We’re… square, on the horse. You don’t owe me a thing.”
“Well, you owe me something.” He levered himself to his feet, whistling for his horse. At her raised brow, he grinned. “Some cover.” Then he ran to get that horse and Rori and Masaru emptied bullets into Barabbas’ men that tried to stop him.
Down the street, Wulf was dragging Mia’s brother who had been shot in the leg to cover when an arrow struck him in his upper back. Urging the boy into the darkness of the shot up general store he turned and faced Bobby’s chief assistant and drew his hatchet into one hand, a familiar sharpened antler in the other and charged him. A man stepped in the way and was taken down with that antler, and then a second before another arrow struck him in the chest, and another… but he still kept walking in implacable fashion toward his target. Two more arrows struck him before he dropped to a knee and when the man loomed over him to take his life he stabbed him with that antler before he looked up at the heavens.
Gordon got on his horse as from the bell tower of the shell of the church The Archbishop was joined by Legacy and they used their long rifles to pick off his pursuers, going towards where Barabbas had that gatling gun. They managed to clear his path and kill his pursuers before the gun took them out, the two men that once were clergy of the church dying in its embrace.
His horse shied and threw him at the sound of gunfire from the wagon that held the gatling gun, and he hit the ground hard, staring up at the sky. Yet he managed to get up to his knees, stood up and kept going. They shot him again, and he dropped back to his knees. He drew out a cheroot, put it to his lips and struggled to strike a match to light it, when the gunner got down and struck one for him, as if to give the dying man his final pleasure in life. After Gordon got a puff or two, he raised his gun to end it when Fury pitched forward onto his face. The men laughed, and the gunner turned back with a small smirk… when his aide’s eyes suddenly went wide. “DYNAMITE!”
He took out the gun in the explosion that killed him and the men on the wagon, the look on Barabbas’ face was thunderous as he realized he would need to enter the town. The few men that he had left fought with Hacaga and Masaru, as finally Bobby Barabbas stood in the shadow of the burned out shell of the church, and a small smile came to his face as he heard her voice for the first time in ages.
“Do you remember my sisters, Barabbas? Can you hear them crying out for your mercy? Tell me Bobby. Did you feel even an instant’s remorse for what you did, when you strung them up to die?”
Barabbas spoke, his voice warm and enrapturing as he turned around and his gaze focused on Aurora, eyes going to that silver coin which had for centuries before this rested with the company of twenty-nine others just like it. “If their bridegroom hadn’t wanted them shorn, he shouldn’t have made them sheep.”
Her face contorted in anger, teeth bared in a rictus as she chased him into what remained of the church, though was it a chase or him leading her on? Then all that was heard was the roar of gunfire.
“I have not always been the best me. And no worries, I don’t intend to burst out with some insipid apology that none of you would likely care to listen to. I allowed myself to not just be tempered by the things that I endured, but I also allowed them to sway me from the path I set for myself. It’s in fact one of the few regrets I’ve had, when looking back at my career. It’s why I work so hard with people like Aria Banks, for instance. I see in her, the type of person I wanted to be when I was her age.”
She exhaled through her nose, making a gentle huffing sound.
“Not that for an instant I think I’m somehow old, or some wise grizzled veteran. I am far too singular to be divested of my glories by taking up a label that doesn’t mean to me what it does to many of those that cling to it. I know going into this that my night may end earlier than I desire. This is the level of respect that I show you, Ana. To look at you, and know that you could be Rebirth Champion, even if you only hold it for half an hour, if you fall at the end of the night to Bailey Kaitlin Huff or to Cassius Reed.
I should feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I should by all rights be a roiling ball of nerves, sick at the heart at the thought of losing not only the Rebirth Championship but the chance to be another first, to be the very first Iron Queen PW has seen. Up until now only Kings ruled that Iron Throne, TJ Jones, Ja-Gi Kyung-Moon, The Great American Nightmare Gryphon. Any one of us could take the prizes at the end. Any one of us could hear our names shouted out and know that celebration is for us.
That’s nothing to fear, or shy away from. Whomever among us walks out with the glory and the gold, the titles involved? Will have done something amazing and that? Is something we all covet. All of us want our portion of history. All of us want to do something no one believes we can. As for myself? I don’t intend to let this slip from my fingers.”
Late Summer 1879
“Did you ever expect this, Bobby? With all the threads you wove?” There was a hitching sound, as she struggled to draw breath. Pink bubbles appeared on her lips, heralding her punctured lung.
His smile was the same. It was the exact same as it had been all those years ago, and his hand reached out to cup the silver coin that rested on her chest, blood blossoming up through the hole in his shirt. “Of course I did.”
“I should have known.” Her amazing green eyes stared into his as they lay across from each other on the dusty wooden floor.