A new look, a new feel, a new day. A new slaughter. I have much work to do, and it starts with you, of all people, Ichabod. It's a small world afterall, isn't it? You look like you haven't been sleeping very well. What a shame. But I've no worries, I know you too well. Sleep or no sleep, that won't stop you from giving it your all. It won't slow you in the least.
An admirable quality, really. Especially among the mindless cattle. But we both know that it'll take more then being able to go without sleep to stop me Ichabod. It'll take a Hell of alot more then that. And if you don't know it, your trusted associate, Mr. Parke, does. I'm sure he'll be there at your side, inventing another of his infamous training routines for you.
This should be entertaining to watch. What will he come up with that could possibly prepare you to face me, head on, for the first time? Whatever it is, it won't be enough. Nothing will.
And you know it.
~Necron, 1/26/03~
}[-The sound of crying is painful, almost as painful as if someone or something were cutting him. He can hear it, children crying. Over it all is a voice, a strange voice with an unidentifiable accent...
...dey are gowering in their bloody holes and govering their eyes, dey are whimbering in derror, my boor loss babbies... no, no dat won't help will it? ah, zee de engynes, yezz, whad a zight, the beeyoodiful engynes againzt de vire, how they churrn, and burrn... i zee a hole, yezz yez dere id iz oho zo brighd around the etches zo folded back...
Fogzes down fogzhulls, radz in radhulls, hyenaz over embdy stomachs wail, oho aha dis iz mozt-mozt gladzome my frenz, more an more de liddle wunz drudge drudge drudge oho on bledding foodzies...-]{
...i don't know what it is you're trying to do james, but don't do it...this is not the answer...
...i don't know what it is you're trying to do james, but don't do it...this is not the answer...
Its gotten hard to keep himself from reverting back to that night when he'd interrupted... something... and saved Darren's life. But it was at the cost of his good friend James. James who was really dead now, unlike the night when Ichabod witnessed firsthand WoW going up in flames. Necron had been there that night. Necron, Spatter, Brimstone. The whole damn gang. Were they really what had been up with James lately?
Ichabod begins to remove the covers from his shivering body.
Shivering? What's up with the heating system??
Steve, who had been recently confined to a temporary wheelchair, is very smart, and very wise in the ways of sport. He is also a filthy rich bastard. He does everything he can to keep Ichabod physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically prepared for every venture. Steve doesn't like to admit it, but Ichabod is his favorite student. More than that, he is a friend.
But the crazy old coot had forgot to turn the heat on. Not that age has anything to do with Steve's mental capacity, its just that you can never tell with him. This is probably some new training technique he's thought up to prepare Ichabod for Necron.
Yeah, complete with some wisecracker adage like "To fight the man of the Inferno, you must be cold as Ice... and freeze your ass off cold is what I'm talking about."
Ichabod's impending laughter is stopped dead when gooseflesh breaks out all over him. It isn't the cold, its a sudden feeling of being watched. He realizes it wasn't really all that cold in here in the first place, because now its damn near unbearable. He reaches in the dark for his practice pants he laid out the night before. To hell with the light, it was fucking cold and he needed some sort of protection if he didn't want to lose his legs to frostbite.
Ichabod shoves one leg in, realizes its the wrong leg, and quickly removes the pants. He resituates them and pulls them on the correct way. He might as well get comfortable, because Steve was going to make him pull double duty in those damned pants today for getting up so...
He knows he heard something. A slight metallic creak, or a brief almost imperceptible shuffle of canvas. Maybe both. Ichabod reaches blindly, but cautiously toward his cigarettes and his Zippo. He leans back against the headboard of the king sized bed and lights the Newport without looking up. As he exhales the first draw, he stares into the flame of the Zippo, trying to calm himself.
Then, as suddenly as he possibly can, he tosses the lit Zippo across the room with a powerful flick of his wrist. The butane flame sputters briefly before striking something and falling, coming to rest about two and a half feet above the floor.
Hey!
Steve... What the hell are you doing?
Coming to get your lazy ass up. Evil moves in shadows, Ichy, and you need to be ready for it to grab you out of the darkness at any moment.
What's that, a warning about Necron? I know how evil works, Steve, I'm the Evil Re--
You're only human. Or are you still not ready to accept that Necron is something different?
Ichabod flips on a desklamp near the bed and sighs. He looks at his mobile friend.
Steve you remember WxW? Remember that big dominant stable, Broken Halo? Sure ya do, it had Anastasia, Phantom, Arctic Fox, Carter Lambert, Kid Galahad, Reverend Brimstone, Necron, and that one guy... who was that? Ya know, the tall good looking one? What was his name?
Ichabod, I realize--
Yeah, that was him, Ichabod. Great guy really. He made that group, at least I thought so. Anyway. I worked hand in hand with Necron, I visited a lot of the places he frequents. The whole group did. I saw what they did to Genocide. Yeah, I was all for it at the time, it was fun. But it also taught me a lot of things about Necron and Brimstone that I just refused to believe before. I know what they are... well, I know what they are not.
Steve looks almost satisfied at this. At least Ichabod isn't fooling himself into thinking that Necron is just playing. That had worked for the old and feeble Brimstone back at Gladiator last year, but this isn't Brimstone--well, not the man himself. Its hard not to believe that Necron, Spatter, Brimstone, and the whole lot isn't just part of some collective mind working for some real life Crimson King. They sure seem to operate on one wavelength. Its funny, and Necron refers to humans as "mindless cattle." At least each human serves his own purpose, and doesn't spend his entire enternal existance carrying out orders.
So you are prepared to face the unnatural in this upcoming challenge?
Look Steve, stop preaching to me, it isn't your style, and it sure as hell isn't mine to listen to it. Listen, I didn't just learn things about Necron and the others while I was in Broken Halo. I learned a lot about how things work on the outside of the protective shell most of us live in. James is dead because something that ugly bastard was after was in James's possession. It made a ruin of James, but James is dead now, and Necron basically doesn't know where to start next. So like mindless cattle he's just going to move to the next watering hole and start drinking. I was there the night of James' demise, so I am the first target. He's not even sure if I have any major thing to do with the whole fucked up plot, all he knows is that he has to start back at square one now, and he's pissed. Now he wants to take it out on something, and he believes I'm the best thing to do that on.
Well, he's about to have a bombshell dropped on his head, because I'm not James. Necron has this scare tactic he likes to use on people, and he's used to people running from him. I don't know how long this mess has been going on, but if you could have seen James that night, you'd think he's been running for years. Well not me, dammit. I'm not a runner. This is a whole new game now. Necron's playground is back alleys and dark houses. Well, the ring is my playground, and if he wants to play, then I'm more than game. And I'll be damn sure to let him know that I'm not afraid of his prophetic words and threats. I'd love to be the first one to stand there in his face and tell him that all his bullshit and scare tactics are going to waste on me, because as much as I know he's not like the rest of us, I also know that in some small way, he fears me.
Necron fears you? You sure about that Ichabod?
Look, he's already trying to get inside my head. I can hear him at night whispering, him and the rest. Its damn bizarre, I'll admit it, but its not scary. But I know he's trying, because he's afraid he won't be able to get to me. I can hear him whispering about my not sleeping lately.. hell I never slept much anyway. I don't know why he thinks calling me out on that is going to worry me. But he whispers these warnings about not being prepared for him, things like that, and I know its him, because I know him. Well, there was another man a lot like Necron who didn't think I'd be prepared for him. That man stood at the end of one hell of a long line of people, and I had to fight my way through all of them in less than five minutes, and when I reached that man, I put him in his damned place. His name was Brimstone, maybe Necron's heard of him.
You think they'd know by know it doesn't pay to stand me up against adversity and tell me, tell me now, that I can't take it, that I can't prepare for it, that I can't do it, that I can't, can't, can't. Coddammit I can and I will, I've done it before and telling me I can't only makes me that more willing to cram it down your fucking throat. Chase your victims Necron, chase them into corners, beat them, torture them, cut them up, kill them, hell make an MTV Crib stew out of them, I don't care. What does it matter? I've killed before, what about it makes you different from any other two bit murderer? Not a damn thing. Try that with me and I'll cut your damn throat.
Ichabod extinguishes his cigarette and looks at Steve.
I'm ready for some training now.
Steve smiles as Ichabod gets up and slips on a tank top. Just as Ichabod is bending to pick up his soft practice shoes, Steve stops wheeling his mechanical chair to the door and turns to Ichabod. He fumbles around in his jacket for a moment and pulls out an envelope.
This came for you early this morning. Some wide eyed shaggy haired kid on a bike delivered it and pedalled off before I could ask him who it was from. There's no return address.
Ichabod opens it and removes the stiff card from inside. Its a clean white card, looking as if it had never been handled before, and Ichabod flips it over. There, in letters so finely made that it's not readily discernable if its the job of a printer or a calligraphist, is one word. It is in a deep red color, the color of pure, clean, human blood.
Confess...
Ichabod shrugs and tosses the card and envelope into a trashcan near the desk. He and Steve leave the room for the day of training ahead.
|
Steve has facilities all over the world, and even one here in Toronto. The facilities are high tech works of art. Each one is equipped with better-than-hotel rooms, offices, conference rooms, weight rooms, practice fields and tracks, audio visual rooms, technologically advanced equipment of all kinds, and several high intensity training modules that Steve had invented himself. His training techniques are, however effective, somewhat unorthodox.
