THE GREAT MOUNTAINTOP MASQUERADE  - "One of These Things is Not Like the Others"




"So how the hell are you so calm anyway?"

Doctor Louis D'Ville smokes and leans against a bar in the kitchen of a very small, unkempt apartment.  The voice we just heard was of Doc's new and most unwanted personal assistant, Rick Good, and it echoed from an open bathroom that was just a few feet away.

"Yo?!"  Rick echoes again.

Doc ignored his first call out.  When the second came, Doc waved a hand, slamming the bathroom door shut.  The flush comes immediately followed by Rick storming out through the door.

"Hey!  I was freakin' talkin' here!"

"Where's your shirt?" Doc asks with a mouthful of cigar smoke.

"Eh," Rick waves him off then shuffles across the room and hops up on a stool across from the doctor.

"You didn't touch my sandwich, did you?"

Doc crinkles his nose as Rick slides a long sandwich on a paper wrapper in front of himself and picks it up.

"No."

"So, Dak," Rick takes a huge bite and asks once more, "How the HELL are you so calm?"

Somehow, Doc deciphered and understood the muffled words.

"Regarding what?"

"Um, you were this close!"  Rick pinches two fingers together.  "... To gettin' that Uni Title!"

There's a pause and Rick licks his fingers.

"THIS close!"  He says emphasizing the pinch.

"I simply saw an opportunity and grrr-rabbed it," Doc growls.  "There will be others."

Doc's assistant grumbles and continues to gnaw at his food.

"Yeah– BUT, what's stopping Mark Flynn from showing up and doing that again?"

"What's that?  Kicking me in the head?"  Doc scoffs.  "Nothing.  He's an imbecile."

"He ruined your cash-in, Dak, and lucky for you he wasn't smart enough to wait a couple of seconds to really fuck up your night!!"

"Lucky for me, huh?"

"Yeah!  Heh…  Oh!  And if it wasn't for Bobby Bourbon–"

"Yes- What of it?"

Rick pauses, staring at Doc, and finishes chewing before taking a big gulp.  Suddenly!  His eyes light up with an epiphany!

"Ya know what?!"  He snaps his fingers and points.  "I know exactly what ya need!"

Doc relaxes in his seat, almost submissive, and leaves a painful, puzzling expression on his face.

"Some protection!"

The good doctor would've swallowed his gum had he been chewing some.

"Protection?"  Doc laughs.  "Pray-tell!  What kind of protection?"

"Ya know, personal protection!  Security!  Some muscle!"

Doc knew exactly what the little gremlin meant.  The extra examples made it certain that his ears hadn't deceived him.

"I don't require some muscle, good sir," Doc huffs again and shoves his still-burning cigar into Rick's harmless sandwich, "OR security or personal protection!  I'm perfectly able to start, fight, and win all of my battles."

Rick stares down at his poor, deceased Jimmy John's sub then back to Doc.





"Look, don't be gettin' your panties in a bunch, Dak!  I'm just callin' it like I see it.  Remember, I'm around to support your best interests here!"

Doc slams his fist down and rises from the stool!  The very foundation below their feet shakes as an ominous red glow shines in through the windows.

"MY best…  interests?"  A fire burns within his one, working eye.  "I don't recall any of my interests lining up with waiting around in this horrendous room OR being bound to a disgusting creature such as yourself."

Not seeming bothered by the puffing of Doc's chest, Rick focuses more on pulling out the burnt-up cigar and saving what he can from his sandwich. 

"... If we wanna get anywhere with this, the first thing you gotta do is trust me, Dak."  Rick takes a big bite.  "I'm not just some asshole…  I have a mission in this just like you do.  If you fuck up, it's my ass up Shit Creek with ya."

The little troll was right, the doctor thought to himself, and it's not like he has a choice in the matter.  This was all an idea brought to you by the 'Powers-That-Be', after all.  It'd be foolish now to fall out of line with their wishes.  Things have been peaceful for this long, a little change in management and a little wrench in the spoke isn't the end of the world.  Perhaps it would be in Doc's best interest to play along long enough where they'll begin looking the other way again and things can go back to the way they were.

"What kind of personal protection?" Doc sings out in a short sigh.

"Ha!"  Rick shouts in victory, "I knew you'd come to your senses.  Let's go."

Rick hops from the stool and strolls around Doc.  As Doc turned to follow him, the scenery completely changed.  The front door and wallpaper stripped drywall was no more, instead replaced with a worn wooden door and a pale cinder block wall.  Rick marches over to the door and rattles the handle.

"Shit!"

He marches back across the room, which is still a kitchen, and pulls open a drawer.

"Are you locked out?" Doc teases.

"Nah!"  Rick drags the drawer out all the way and drops it on the floor causing all of the random items in it to explode out onto the floor.  Within the mess, he  reaches down and pulls up a crowbar.  "I gotta key!"

He shoves the crowbar between the door and the frame and leans back, easily prying it open.

Blankness appeared behind the door.  No color.  No light.  No darkness.

Rick turns to Doc, "You comin' or what?"


*  *  *


The doctor wasn't accustomed to traveling at someone else's expense.  His disgusting assistant hadn't impressed him at all.  Anyone with even the littlest bit of power can portal travel… but his range of abilities did intrigue Doc a bit. 

Rick's doorway takes them to an alley between two large concrete walls in the dead of night.  There's garbage stacked beside overflowing dumpsters and scattered across the ground.  Sewage-like smelling steam ominously rises up from the drains placed systematically along the path on either side.  Yep, your typical, common, disgusting, piss and shit smelling alley.  The doctor looks behind him and notices the doorway they passed through is gone and nothing but a wall remains.  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he lags a little behind his assistant who seemed to just pick a direction and went with it.

Doc never did ask where Rick was taking him, but Rick did mention "he had a hook-up somewhere down in the South that could point them in the direction of some serious cold blooded killers."  To which, Doc rolled his eyes to and continued to follow along.

As they come to the end of the alley, there's three paths in front of them that are basically the same exact thing…  More disgusting alleys.  It resembles a labyrinth as they go from one to another, left and right, sometimes straight.  After several turns, Doc finally chimes in.

"Are you certain where you're going?"

Rick holds out his hand.

"Eh…"  He gives him the so-so sign.  "Sometimes I get lucky and sometimes I don't."

Cutting another corner, Rick points and "Aha's" at what looks like something different, finally.  They follow the path and walk into a courtyard.  The concrete path turns to a gravel one and takes them to a gazebo in the center.  Past it, the path leads to the other side where there's a closed gate that takes them into another alley.  Rick is marching along when Doc reaches out and grabs him by the collar to stop him.

"ACK!  W-T-F Dak?"

Doc pulls him back and points to the gazebo where someone is standing inside it.

"A friend of yours?"  Doc guesses.

Rick takes a closer look.  The person is wearing a trenchcoat and fedora combo that completely hides their true identity.

"Uhhhnn,... Nope.  I don't think so."

There's barely any light, a few dimly lit lanterns glow down the path and around the gazebo, but you can count the amount of them on a hand and a couple fingers.

…….

There are seven of them.

While they didn't provide much, it was enough to see that trenchcoat and hat didn't move a muscle the entire time our duo observed them.

"Fuck it."

Rick continues without a care, and Doc chuckles to himself at the ignorance of his assistant and follows along.

"Are you going to ask him for directions?"  Doc jokes.

Rick flips him off in return.

"Yo!"

Rick hobbles up the couple of steps of the gazebo, tripping over the middle one, and meets trenchcoat and hat inside.

Out of breath somehow Rick goes, "Yo…" again.

Trenchcoat and hat continue to stand there, until it reaches out with a gloved hand and grabs Rick around the throat!  Rick is lifted into the air and then gets launched past Doc and into some shrubs across the path… nearly twenty feet away!  Doc sways back and smiles.

"Hello, my friend!"

Doc leaps and misses all three steps landing a Super-Dock Punch right on the side of trenchcoat and hat's head!  However, on Doc's follow through, he noticed there was actually no head there to punch.  The momentum of his swing caused him to crash and break through the wooden rails surrounding the gazebo and landing in the grass.  He quickly looks back and sees the trenchcoat and hat fall to the ground and a couple of ravens fly out from under them.

Doc's eyes narrow.

"I hate ravens."

The wind suddenly picks up violently.  Doc looks up to see an unkindness of ravens circling the graveyard.  There are hundreds of them.  They circle around then split into different groups, forming little whirlwinds until they land and become more trenchcoats and hats.  They surround and slowly close in on the good doctor, who cracks his neck, back, and knuckles as he waits. 

The first trenchcoat and hat attacks, lunging after Doc who simply grabs them by the wrist and whips them into the wall closest by crumpling them like the last one.  A couple ravens fly away.  Two more jump in and Doc easily disposes of them in a similar fashion.  Another approaches and apparently knows martial arts.  Doc blocks several punches and kicks until he manages to sneak in a kick to the midsection followed by a DDT that destroys it.  Seven or eight ravens flew out of that one.  Doc is then caught from behind by a trenchcoat and hat, binding his arms as another trenchcoat and hat approaches with a blade.

"Where did you get a knife?"  Doc asks the birds in disguise.

The armed trenchcoat and hat go for a straight stab at Doc, but he slithers to the side and the trenchcoat and hat holding him is stabbed causing them to fold up and  some ravens fly away.  Doc prepares for a showdown when there's shots fired!

After five shots, one manages to strike the last trenchcoat and hat and several ravens fly away.  Rick runs onto the seen and empties the rest of this clip into the sky after the birds.  He looks to Doc..

"What the fuck was that?"

Doc sighs and continues watching the skies.

"Ravens…"

Rick, dumbfounded, "Uh, yeah, I know fucking ravens, Dak."

"We should keep moving."

Doc and Rick travel through the gate on the opposite end of the courtyard and continue up and down the different alleys until Rick spots another doorway.

"There it fucking is!" He says in a celebratory voice.  "There.  It.  Fucking.  Is."

"There what is?"

"The place we've been looking for, Dak!  C'mon!"

"Now, just a second here.  Before we take another step…  I'm having serious second thoughts on…."

Rick interrupts.

"On what?  What?  You think you don't need protection because you took down some ravens?  That attack alone is reason enough to look into this shit, Dak!  I mean, I did have to bail your ass out back there, remember…"

"You intervened with a firearm.  My fists are doing just fine.  And they will do just fine on Warfare.  In the last few months, I've gotten victories on both Mark Flynn and Bobby Bourbon.  I've attained a briefcase by it simply falling into my lap.  I've been turning heads with every step and breath I take.  If anyone needs protection, sir, it's everyone else from me.  I'm the threat.  I'm the Big Bad Wolf.  Everyone simply looks at my track record for the last couple of years when my greatness dates back much further than that.  People may forget.  People DO forget, but it doesn't matter.  Greatness is forever.  Whether you choose to exploit it and carry you through the rest of your career or life is up to you.  If people forget that I'm capable of turning this place completely upside down, I'll remind them!  It's not hard.  All I have to do is show up more than once a year and I have half of this FINE federation groveling at my toes."

"I've seen the mountaintop.  I've owned the mountaintop.  And the mountaintop?  Is no place for Bobby Bourbon.  Call him what you like, Uni Champ…  King…  Grand Winnie the Pooh Bear.  But the mountaintop was never for him.  His acceleration matches his deceleration and he's crashed and burned so many times that some say those fires still burn."

"I am a bit in a state of awe that I have an opportunity to shut both of these ingrates down in one shot.  Like I've said, I've beaten them both in recent times and now they're bouncing back from completely melting down as Tag Team Champions.  Followed by the vicious attack while I was taking care of business, of course, this is a chance to really show them how things are going to be.  Will they be head hunting each other in the match?  Eh.  I'd imagine so, unless this has somehow been some stupid ploy.  Either way, I'm fine with taking both of their heads if they decide to work in tandem like the cowards they are."

"And Mark Flynn is, in fact, a coward.  The man is so scared to look anything but great that it's going to be his demise.  He's so scared of stepping in shit that his tip toeing around in MY shit is going to get him killed.  He was the talk of the town the entire eight years he spent away with a sore neck.  All the ones familiar with his madness always fell and flashed back to it and since he's been back I think I still hear a parade somewhere.  It's amazing what a change in certain landscapes can do to someone's health sometimes.  On that matter, for as much shit as he shovels my way every chance about my efforts and records and numbers and days and nights I've spent doing other things; those eight years I systematically and methodically forced myself and my name upon the weak and feeble minds of this fine federation and stand before you today the household name that continues to haunt….  Everyone.  My growth and my reign of power.  My stranglehold was at its strongest while Mark Flynn was gone and away.  I look very much to show him what it was like back then.  If he and Bobby still have each other's number and talk, perhaps he could ask him.  Bobby Bourbon waited for the perfect moment to decide to try his best against me and when he fell flat on his face…  All that led to this moment in time right here."

"To me, this match means nothing.  I'm going to smash the two of their heads together and make scrambled eggs and move onto much bigger and better things.  It's time that this new regime, this new and wonderful XWF really sees and really feels what the good doctor is capable of.  And think of it, once I'm through with Bourbon and Flynn…  It's onto Free For All where we get to meet ALL kinds of new blood.  It's going to be an exciting year for me and probably not so much for everyone else.  Things are 'Set to Kill' these days and I'm just really in the mood to hurt some folk, ya know?"

Rick's still standing basically in the doorway with a blank face.

"Are you done jabbering?  In here..  At the very fucking least we can get a drink.  Come on.."

Doc puts his head down as the two enter through the door.  There's a dirty, ripped poster hanging on the wall beside the door they didn't notice.  A wanted poster with a drawing looking quite closely to our Doc on it.