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Montague stares at the ground, waiting with morbid anticipation. His left hand is casually resting on the head of his cane, the length of which is resting on his left shoulder. His right hand is tucked into the pocket of his ringmaster jacket, and his top hat is tilted down over his right eye. Over this ensemble, a dark cloak that obscures his identity.
In matching cloaks all around him, his new troupe, the AstroCreeps, are also watching the unmoving mound of earth with patience. When the time comes, each of them whispers a verse of encouragement. He knows the panic his new friend, the broken, violent doll, must be feeling at this moment. Montague had been put through the same ritual only days before. When the earth had granted his rebirth and he’d broken through the surface, muddy throwing daggers clutched in bloody hands, he’d felt like a man unshackled. Montague remembers feeling that it must have been quite a show, and now he’s able to witness it firsthand. The anticipation is delicious, and he hopes it will last. Instead of daggers, Jacky has been buried with her gun. It isn’t long before the snap of reports, muffled though they are in the ground, can be heard. Montague’s heart races like the first time he watched James, the Escapist in the Cabinet of Outcasts, perform. When this is all over, he decides, he will have to bring the Cabinet to Gnaw Bone. He has a feeling his new friends will get along quite well with his old friends. The ground pulses, then goes still. Montague raises an eyebrow, wondering if this is the moment. The Ragdoll draws it out a bit longer, however, before finally pushing through. Dirt and roots tangle her in her hair as she emerges, while both pebbles and insects tumble from her dress. She collapses forward, sobs wracking her body. Daedalus: She’s alive! Montague shares a look with his comrades, only to turn and see that she’s raised the pistol. As panic-stricken as she might be, the barrel doesn’t tremble. It simply moves from one AstroCreep to another as she tries to decide who to blow away. When her tear-streaked eye falls on him, Montague knows his cue. He turns on his heel and begins to sprint back toward the farmhouse. Kosnar, Pisces, and Daedalus join him, just as they’d rehearsed. She needs this moment of triumph after the trauma they put her twelcome her to the fold, and they were willing to let her have it. It’s all part of the show, afterall. Tempest stays behind as the rest of the group retreats to the house. While the ritual/reunion outside continues, Montague strolls through the massive farmhouse. Somehow, despite having had to rebuild it--its previous iteration had been burned to the ground by JC--the house still sports a patina of age and decay. Montague marvels at the care and love with which each wooden panel and ceramic tile and had been selected and placed, as if the architect selected the most damaged or aesthetically incongruent few pieces from multiple stockpiles to assemble into this monstrosity of a home. The surfaces aren’t level, the hallways tilt, and the steps rise at varying distances. He loves it. It’s a dwelling constructed by assembling the misfits and rejects of building materials, and finding out how they fit together to work. It’s chaotic and unstable, and it’s a home. Montague is going to enjoy visiting as often as he can. He makes his way to the southern wing of the house, where Daedalus had set him up after Tempest insisted that the Doctor-Professor must be as close to the stage as possible. He bypasses the room where he would be sleeping while the newly-expanded core group stretched their legs, became more familiar with one another, and planned. At the end of the hallway, a slightly larger, barely in its frame door opens into a cozy intimate lounge. There are a few dozen folding chairs arranged unevenly in front of a small, two-foot high plywood stage that is no more than twelve feet deep. It looks like the type of set up a rural school might have for a talent show - the type of school that might close early on important harvest days - except for one difference. Instead of proud parents in overalls and straw hats, the audience is made up of mannequins. It looks like they may have been dressed by an overzealous child working with articles of clothing salvaged from the dumpsters behind the Salvation Army and Spirit Halloween. Many of them are missing one or two limbs, but they’ve been ratchet-strapped in place to keep from overbalancing and toppling to the floor. Montague: A captive audience. Just what I’ve always wanted. He smirks and shrugs off the ceremonial cloak he’d worn to Jacky’s funeral, revealing the full regalia he’d become known for prior to his… crisis of faith. Hopping up onto the stage, he approaches a four-foot high object covered in a drop cloth. Tempest had whispered to him that there was a gift for him in the lounge, and Montague is certain this must be it. Lifting the drop cloth, he reveals a large podium of sorts. Embedded in the top is a great, rusty, iron bar with ridges to make a handle. Montague leans his cane against the podium, then grips the handle and pulls. It lifts out at an angle to the left with some resistance. He’s able to power the lever into position, and as he does, he notices that the audience seats are lifted slightly on individual platforms to create an amphitheatre effect, where the farther back they are seated, the higher up they are. Raising a curious eyebrow, he examines the podium closer and discovers more of its secrets. The handle appears to be a crank, and with a final pull, he locks it into the mechanism within the podium. When he does, a catch is released inside, and a small, black remote drops into a shoot near the bottom, like a fortune being dispensed from a carnival fortune-telling machine. Montague takes the remote and presses, then looks around. Eventually, he sees it; the head of one of the mannequins has been replaced with a digital camera, his eye caught by the blinking red light. Montague: Well, isn’t that something? But what happens if I do… He grips the edge of the podium with his right hand for leverage, and begins to crank with his left. To his delight, the audience begins to rotate slowly around him. The more he cranks, the more speed the room picks up, and the easier it becomes to turn the mechanism. Soon, he’s cackling as he cranks, feeling like Pyramidhead in Lakeside Amusement Park, operating the hellish carousel as it descends.  The promo feed begins, and already you feel dizzy. At first it would seem like the Showman, Montague Cervantes, is on a spinning dais, but as he moves and flourishes with practiced steps, turning to address the flopping figures around your view, you realize that the camera is spinning about him. Your stomach twists as you attempt to focus on the Doctor-Professor, but he keeps whirling about, not making it easy. Montague: Oh how they’ve whined. ‘But whyyyyyyy? Why is the magic man in my match?? I am undefeated here! I’ve won all one match I’ve been in! It’s not faaaaair!’ He snickers as he shakes his head, twirling his cane as he saunters casually around the stage. Montague: The Showman hears your concerns. I know you feel hard done by. How disheartening you must have felt; if only they hadn’t given me a ‘pass.’ If only you hadn’t had to deal with my presence. If it were just you and Sebastian Everett-Bryce III in the match, perhaps you would be the UGWC Chaos Champion, and all your hard work here in the Coalition would have been rewarded. He snorts at the ridiculousness of the notion. Montague: Maybe once you’ve paid a few dues and can grasp the seemingly complex and unfathomable customs, you’ll realize that you were the afterthought at And Then the Dragons Came. You were the interloper in a contest already weeks in the making, and your admittedly impressive debut match was rewarded with a pencil-in. Don’t feel discouraged, Mr. War. You still have your illustrious Carnage history to sing about until you’ve achieved something of… substance... here in UGWC. He gives a slight bow, effectively dismissing the brute who misunderstood the divisional rankings. After holding it for a second, he pops back up, sweeping the cane in an arc. Montague: Now! Speaking of Mr. The Third… you and I, sir, have hovered around one another’s spheres of influence all year, haven’t we? We’ve been little more than background Easter egg characters and special guest stars in one another’s Chaos Championship careers so far. We’ve both toyed with the AstroCreep, waltzed with the Final Girl, and courted the Corpse Bride. Until very recently, though, we’ve never really trained our sights on each other… and we have yet to give one another our full, undivided attention. Holding the cane across his shoulders, wrists draped over the ends, he stares directly at the camera. Montague: You’d be a liar if you denied watching, as I have, as each card goes up, wondering if it will be your name or mine against the Chaos Champion. Wondering who we would have to crush to improve our divisional ranking. He shrugs, believing what he’s just hypothesized he shares in common with the current Chaos Champion. Montague: You said some inaccurate, and frankly lazy, things about me before And Then the Dragons Came. You knew that what you said was false, so I can only assume you said it to impress the waves of incoming, uneducated talent that have arrived in the last couple of months. Unfortunately… for them… all you’ve done is downplay how dangerous I am. They’ll learn… He points up at the camera with the head of the cane. Montague: Hopefully you haven’t obfuscated what you already know about me, because when I come to pay back the insult at Massive Melee, you’re in for a stark reminder. He cackles as he pirouettes back to the podium, turning a crank on it with gusto. You can feel the motion around his dais speed up, and your stomach drops. Montague: That’s the feature presentation, though, and we have a few previews to get through before we get there. Satisfied with the rpms of the room, Montague disengages with the crank and begins gesturing wildly. Montague: Perhaps so many of these new recruits are dismayed by my presence because I, like the rest of the AstroCreeps, represent a style and way of life that makes them… uncomfortable. Oh, I’m not implying that they fear us. I mean, they do, but they’d never admit it, so why waste energy convincing them of what they already know? Another playful shrug before he continues. Montague: No, what’s far more obvious is that so many of the competitors here can’t reconcile a subset of the roster that is equally as entertaining when they are defeated as when they are victorious. Too many of you are so… serious! He clasps his hands behind his back, allowing the cane to tap the stage as he paces. Montague: Look at Centurion. When will he realize that this is all part of a show? It’s like we’ve been watching the same rerun every week that he’s aired, over and over. Ruby appearance, chess metaphor, wistful reminiscence, Final Fantasy reference, cut, send tape. If he’s not up against Gabriel Baal, you can’t tell one video from another! Is this supposed to entertain us? No, of course not. Centurion isn’t here to entertain. He’s here to go through the motions because he knows people here. He’s syndicated, but he jumped the shark long ago. It’s time for the network to cancel him. He nods and gestures as if trying to calm the nonexistent applause of his silent, plastic audience. Montague: At least we have Magdalena Lockheart on the card this week, finally! Level Up’s darling, the Black Legacy, the Engine of Entropy! Now here is an entertaining blast from the past. Not finding what she needs over in the video game company, she’s been haunting the halls of the Chicago arena like your classic phantom lady. She’s La Llorona, weeping over what she’s lost, unsure who to blame and lashing out at everyone who’s foolish enough to wander near her. The AstroCreeps will be watching carefully to see what sort of chaos she spawns now that she’s once again fighting under the Coalition banner. Moving toward the podium, he starts to wrap up his speech. Montague: I’m afraid it’s on us to carry the match, Maggie and I, but between the two of us, there’s more than enough showmanship to keep us from devolving into a punchclock match. As he says ‘punchclock match’, he yanks the crank and slams it into the side of the podium, triggering the brake. Sparks fly out from around the mannequins, and a metallic whine pierces through as the seats grind to a halt. Montague: Because it’s all part of the show…  |