“Just another bump in the road.”

But this bump sure hurt like hell.

Smoke billows into the air from a nearby diesel truck which has pulled off the main road. The South Carolinan plate is barely attached to the back bumper before swinging and clattering to the ground. A few feet away from the wreckage lays Calvary with tire threads across his chest and blood covering his mouth and chest.

The driver door swings open as a figure appears only for a moment before vanishing into the gathering smoke combining with the late night fog.

Despite the figure blending in, the eerie pitch of his laughter gave him away as something other than normal. It was a haunting, twisted, perverse sort of giggle. Something you’d only hear in your darkest nightmares.

Calvary groans as he touches his mouth to see his own blood spilled out onto his lips. His head falls back to the pavement as he tries to collect his bearings.

It’s in this moment that a weight is felt upon his chest. He looks up to see the form-fitted mask gleaming down at him. The mask was contorted into a smile, almost stretching the fabric to unforgiveable lengths.

“Oooh-da-le! Look what I’ve caught in my little snare.”

“Get off of me, you little-“

A piece of clothing is shoved into his mouth and throat as Calvary gags. The smell of the rag is something fierce, and the taste…

“Shhh, shh, shush. There’s no need to fight this anymore. The end is inevitable for everyone. Why don’t we send you out, with a bang?”

The dark-clothed figure pulls out a Zippo lighter and quickly lights the end of the rag.

The entire rag ignites inside of the mouth of Calvary! He cries out in pain as the figure just kicks him in the side. He quickly turns onto his side and spits out the flaming rag that he now realized was coated in some sort of flammable material.

Kick.

Is this how it ends?

Kick.

Broken ribs… a torched throat…

KICK!

A monster using me to catapult himself…

KI-

No.

With the good arm, Calvary snatches the foot of the dark figure and yanks him to the ground beside him. Calvary staggers up to his feet, but the pounding in his head nearly drags him back down again.

The figure rises, now able to be seen better. The mask was not a cloth one as he had perceived before. It was someone else’s face torn and strapped around his own.

Another person’s face used as a mask for himself.

“Hero boy! I must say I’ve never fought one as fucking stubborn as you. Say, what is it that you call yourself?”

Calvary rights himself groggily.

“Calvary. My name is Calvary.”

Another shriek of a laugh followed by the withdrawal of a pistol from a breast pocket.

“Excellent. Now I know what to carve into your body when I’m through having my fun.”

The firearm goes off as Calvary’s eyes widen.

But it’s Salvation!

His newly found sidekick has sprung into action with a two-ton punch! The masked figure staggers back towards the eighteen wheeler with another laugh.

“Oh, you want to join my creative arts class, do ya? I’m afraid you missed sign ups!”

With this, the truck behind him detonates. The explosion envelopes where the masked figure had been standing as Salvation staggers backwards at the brightness.

Calvary falls to a knee as Salvation squats next to him, holding him upwards.

“You don’t have to do everything alone, you know?”

Calvary nods and spits out some blood.

“So I’m learning.”

Hours later.

Calvary finds himself back home laying back in a chair. His wounds have already remarkably begun healing. The only evidence remaining is his charred lips and his chest is wound in bandages.

“Anarchy.”

He coughs with the sound of liquid in his throat.

“It’s this very sentiment that truly derives all of the decision making at XWF. The show lends itself to creating the very thing that I strive to halt. Where the world is coated in the sticky sap of anarchy, I seek to be the solvent that flushes out in the infection. I did not come to XWF to fix its problems. I came here to seek out this Anarchy, and to rise above it.”

Calvary sits up and begins slowly removing the bandages showing his wounds beneath slowly healing.

“It’s in South Carolina that I must come to the realization that failure is only part of the journey. It’s from this fall that we learn to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back to the task at hand. Even with viruses lurking around every corner, we must stay diligent, and we must stay true to ourselves. I may have lost battles in the past. I may have losses on my record. But it’s the future that I can change, and it’s that that I can mold.”

Calvary grabs his blue and red uniform before looking back once more with his eyes focused and honed in.

“I face a trial of my own errors on Thursday, and I promise that I will shine. I will show the lessons learned, and I will teach every single person who steps into that battle royal a valuable lesson. One I had to learn myself.”

A warm smile.

“How to handle defeat and humiliation.”

His smile fades.

“And how to get over it.”