Mark Flynn. Standing in darkness. Staring deep into the eyes of the skull he ripped off the neck of that skeleton.
 
Suddenly, his ears prick up, his fingers tighten… From a respectful grip around the temples of the head…
 
To shoving his thumbs into his toy’s eyeholes…
 
His head slowly turns…

Toward the camera.
 
And he smiles.
 
“AHA!"

"..."

"There you are, Eli.”
 
“All this time, I thought you were this fellow…”
 
Flynn looks back to the skeleton, its remnants of orbital bone cracked, creaking, splitting as he tests its design strength with a gentle pull of his thumb in its eye…
 
Tension tighter…

Tighter…
 
“You have to admit though…”
 
CRACK! Flynn’s thumb pulls straight through the skull…

Flynn grins as he lifts the skull, now missing a huge chunk around its right eye….
 
“There’s a certain resemblance between the two of you…”
 
“It doesn’t matter who either of you once were.”
 
“And now, you're both irreparably broken…. rapidly decaying... and unquestionably, dead.”
 
Flynn tosses away the skull, done with his old toy.
 
He then turns his body towards the camera. Towards his new playmate.
 
“Oh Eli. I’ve been waiting so long. And now, you’re here! Just where I wanted you. In just the state I demanded you come in.”
 
“A failure. Desperately flailing, changing subject, tongue whirring at a nigh impossible pace, trying to dig your way out of the hole….”

"As it fills with cement."

"Trying to question my intention... As the spotlight stays on you."

"I am not double-dealing. I am not leaping back and forth between topics to distract the world. My message remains the same. Of one chord."

"That you are dying. That your power has left you. That your words, that your plans, that your machinations..."

"Have lost their immortality... Their previously guaranteed eternal life... They have become..."

"Temporary."

"And while you did finally respond, Eli..."

"Your response was... Disappointing..."
 
Flynn salivates, eyes dilating.
 
He bites his lip, to assuage the hunger in his stomach.
 
“Eli. You’re so focused on maintaining control. On keeping your hand steady even as my blade drops to lop it off... Staying the content of your sermon toward useless analogies.”
 
“That you’re only making it clear how little you can say. How nothing you can spew from your whore’s son mouth can truly evoke the message of your heavenly master…”

"Allow me to re-iterate your assignment this week."

"I asked you to ANSWER MY QUESTIONS."

"I DEMANDED THAT YOU FACE THE FAILURE OF YOUR WORDS AND ANSWER MY CALL…"

"Instead… What do I get?"

"..."

"Parable."

"Weak, flimsy."

"Indirect."

"Parable. The tool of the perplexed undereducated Sunday School Teacher. To try and trick the questioning mind into subservience..."
 

Quote: There was a young man who ventured out to do something no one had done before in his family. It wasn't to go to college or make a lot of money.. he wanted to work for NASA with one goal in mind. He spent all his hard earned money and his time, which you could never get back, and finally made it. He became an employee of NASA and started to slowly move up. He did flight simulations as if he were going to go in space. He studied articles that were written in the past about how asteroids worked. He did everything possible so he would be ready when he reached his goal. Fin-

 
“Sorry, Eli. Hate to interrupt. But I just have to ask...”
 
“During any of my last inquiries... Did I ask you to tell me about a NASA Employee... that tried his hardest... And came up short?”
 
“Did I ask you to tell me about some worthless little gutter punk that dreamed of one day studying the furthest planet...”
 
“And then failed to do so? So he pretended that when he came up short, it was good enough? That failure was sufficient for his MISSION!?!?”
 
“No, Eli. I asked you to answer where your power was going. If you could get it back.”
 
“Why you kept making excuses when you lost. Week after week after week.”
 
“How you could ignore the failure in your own voice, when you used to speak of the power and glory that would eviscerate your ignorant foes…”
 
“And now all you can muster is comparing your opponent’s lives to Sitcoms from the Nineteen-Nineties… And sing your adorable little nursery rhymes...”
 
“Despite your best efforts working to the contrary, you seemed to accidentally answer my question. Your goal was to reclaim this planet for the being who created it. To set the world on fire. To show the world the error of its ways by rising to the top of the mountain and casting the idols the world held so dearly into the abyss… To show them all how meaningless their golden calves were all along…”
 
“And now…”
 
“Your goal has shifted. To reflect your new… limited range of abilities…”
 
“Your goal isn't dominance. Instead, adequacy. Mediocrity."

Quote:
I was apart of the team that defeated you, but I'm still getting weak.

"You were the smallest cog in a winning team. Azrael Erebus ended that match pinning a former King of the XWF. You ended that match bleeding from the skull outside the ring. Far, far away from your 'team's' glorious victory..."
 
Flynn shakes his head... Remembering that night in his mind's eye... And retching in disgust...

“Your voice used to command unquestioned authority...Now, its message is only...that you won't get pinned. That you'll stay in the middle of the pack. Second place in a three man contest...”

Quote:
I didn't get pinned or submitted against Azrael in the triple threat. But, I'm still becoming weaker right? 

"Again, I must apologize, Eli, if I misunderstood your message... But is that what you've meant all this time? The message that your God sent you to proclaim from the Heavens to unwashed begotten children... was to slide by with the bare minimum standards of success...And play these failures off as a moral victory?"

Quote:
Can you hear it? It's all around. The rain falls and it doesn't make sure it's alright with you first. The rain doesn't check your plans to make sure it doesn't inconvenient you. It comes and goes as it pleases. You can argue with it. You can be upset at it. You can try your best to fight it, but in the end it always wins the fight.

"Sorry, Eli. This message was in fact accurate. I guess you were the rain in that Triple Threat match. I imagine the rain also could stand by helplessly as two other people actually competed for victory... Unpinned."

"A non-factor."

"One hole I must point out, though... When you say that the rain always wins the fight... Exactly what did you mean? Because you didn't walk out of Monday the winner."

Quote:You respond to my words as if what I said was all literal.

Quote:My words are gonna mean more and more to you all.. just you all wait and see.

"...Looking back, I honestly don't know why I expected you to answer my challenge... Why I hoped you might actually delve deep to consider and counter my words... Why would I expect you to do that?"

"It's a power you don't have any more..."

"Considering your God is no longer in your corner."

"Your words are water vapor. Your speeches are sand. Your metaphors a gentle gust of wind, relieving me. Comforting me."

“Yes, Eli. That’s right. You lost. You lose. Often. You have lost more and more... and MORE... AND MORE...”
 
“And it’s not the fact THAT you lost. It’s the fact that you won’t admit it. It’s your subconscious fear, that tugging on your heartstrings that generates the cold sweat on the back of your neck. That you can’t appear weak."

"You have put your own perceived, holllow 'invincibility' above all else."

"Above your God."

"Your own immortality... Your own message... More important than His."

"That is why he has abandoned you."

"I don't need to hear his voice, Eli. I only interpret his will. As a true prophet should."

"And Eli? Recent events have made clear what you have tried to hide for months..."

"Your muscles weaken... Your voice grows hoarse..."

"Your body fails you... Your gaunt thin legs, no longer fit to carry your ever-growing stomach..."

"You're no longer worthy of the task of carrying His word..."

Quote:If he's my God, then he's your God.

"My God, Eli? No..."

"My God is the Spirit of Vengeance himself, the Pursuer of Righteous Damnation, the Master of Punishment for those who claim to come in His name, to speak in His name and carry only lies and dust... My God works not in forgiveness, cares not for any seeing the Light of Heaven... my God's only concerns are Hellfire and those who have earned it, seeing it firsthand..."

"My God shrieks every moment, every second, every microcosm of time his howls echoing against the walls of my skull, for me to rip out your throat and swallow the meat of your FAT NECK...As you bleed to death from your throat..."

"Your God is not my God."

"It is only coincidence that this event has them working on the same side..."

"Only their powers combined have brought me back to life... That I might end your immortality... And drag you back down to the depths of Hell..."

"Eli. Attack me. DROP YOUR COWARDLY METAPHORS AND STRIKE AT ME DIRECTLY!!!!"

"I BEG YOU. PULL OUT MORE OF YOUR SALESMAN TRICKS AS YOU STALL FOR A MIRACLE FROM A GOD THAT NO LONGER WANTS YOU SERVING AS HIS VESSEL."

"COMPARE ME TO A CHILD ACTOR FROM ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE SITCOMS. SING ANOTHER CHILD'S NURSERY RHYME. TOUCH ON MY FREQUENT USE OF PAUSES.

MAKE.

FUN.

OF.

THE.

WAY.

I.

T.
A.
L.
K."

"DO SOMETHING.

STRIKE NOW!!!"

Quote:If you are callin' yourself Mark Flynn 2.0, then I suppose Mark Flynn 1.0 did end.. which means if ya want to get technical about it.. I did end Mark Flynn.

Flynn pauses a moment...

Then chuckles... Shaking his head...
 
“Eli. For a preacher..."

"You seem to not understand much about rebirth..."

"You seem to be unable to understand the concept of re-naming. You ran into the same difficulty taking on Azrael... Getting stuck on the fact that he once went by another name...And being too mentally inadequate to understand the concept behind his rebirth...”
 
“You’re like an infant. No object permanence. Do you understand that concept, Eli? I’ll explain since most concepts other people picked up in Elementary school seem a little too complicated for you to grasp…”
 
“A baby sees his parent, let’s say his mother.”

The camera tightens around Flynn's face...
 
“His mother raises her hand up over her eyes."

Flynn's eyes shoot over his face...Covering his eyes, his nose, his mouth...

"The baby falls quiet. Where did his mother go?”
 
“…And…”
 
“PEEKABOO.”

Flynn's hands shoot to their sides.

And a skull remains.

...And slowly drops. Flynn's face behind it, cradling the skull on an elbow...
 
“The baby laughs. But does not understand the concept..."

"Just as you don't seem to understand resurrection..."

"How odd for a man of your... profession... to not believe that something dead, cannot arise..."

"But make no mistake, Eli. And I'll try to explain this in few words so your pea-sized brain doesn't have to work too hard..."

"Mark Flynn 2.0 was not a literal transformation... Something I'm surprise you didn't understand... It seems as if..."

Quote:You respond to my words as if what I said was all literal.

"Instead, I was Mark Flynn. And I am Mark Flynn. The Mark Flynn of old. The legend. Physically, the same man."

"But within, I have undergone a transformation."

"Like when Saul became Paul, to suit his new role carrying out God's will."

"I too have come here for a purpose... I too stand across from you, to fulfill the intention of a wrathful and angry God..."

"Alternatively, you... have no next chapter. You have nowhere to go. And you have no one to blame but yourself."

"You don't allow yourself the chance to... You have closed your heart to such opportunities..."

"You refuse to change. Even if your God were to command you to change..."

"His words would fall on the deafest ears...Because..."

Quote:
I don't leave and reinvent myself like you do. There's no need.

"Because Eli knows better than his God. Because Eli has abandoned the God that gave him his power... That instilled in him the strength, the vision, to accomplish all he has..."

"Like King Solomon himself... Eli reached the top of the mountain... And grew content..."

"Fat..."

"And Lazy..."

Quote:
Tell me your story is more than that...

Tell me you have something to fight for.

"Eli, if you ask what I fight for, then I understand why you can't answer my questions..."

"Because I'm right. Your ears are deaf. Your heart is closed."

"I say again..."

"I have my Ordained VEGENACE to fight for. I have an eternity trapped in the deepest, darkest pit of HELL to fight FOR so you can enjoy the same experience... I have your mouth frozen, resting permanently immobile on your severed head to fight for. I have the knowledge that as blackness consumes your vision, as my fists dull in sensation against your skull, as your eyes no longer see in this material plane...No longer see my teeth, your blood running down my jaw..."

"And instead, see in the distance... A light."

"I fight for the knowledge that the light."

"Is a never-ending undying fire. That your soul will be drawn to, unable the resist the urge. To dive in... To spend the rest of your days, at the bottom of a pit of all-consuming Hellfire."

"And that you know..."

"Deep Down..."

"In the pit of what's left of your soul..."

"That no matter how immortal you claim to be..."

"No matter how eternal you lie that your hoax message is... No matter how talented of a charlatan you are..."

"You have abandoned your God with your lies."

"And he has in turn abandoned you..."

"Without him, you are mortal. You are flesh and blood."

"And for certain, you are a skilled warrior in the ring..."

"But we both know, Eli..."

"We know better than anyone, you and I..."

Quote:
every warrior falls someday.

"See you on the battlefield, warrior..."