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Thaddeus Duke · (09-23-2021)

PRESENT DAY

Bermuda Triangle || Atlantic Ocean || 0802 Hours

I’ve mostly fallen silent. It’s ‘game time’ in a manner of speaking and I have to shake whatever personal thoughts that are in my mind. The lives of my men and women aboard Leviathan depend on it. There’s no guarantee that even if my air force invades their space as they’re hunting down the submarine, that they’ll focus all of their attention on all of us rather than the target in front of them. Warships are equipped to do both simultaneously.

”General?” I call out through the radio. ”You have a copy?” Reception has been sporadic, cutting in and out. I’m not sure how much of it is just the distance and altitude in which my air force is flying and how much of it is the Bermuda Triangle just doin’ her thing and playing games with our equipment.

”Yes sir?” he calls back, though the transmission is a bit garbled. ”You’re breaking up………………. Enough to understand.”

”Send two more waves,” I instruct him. ”Six jets, two bombers each.”

”……………...” comes the empty reply.

Back on board the Vengeance, I was so amped to fuck some shit up that I didn’t even think about this mission over all. I have enough planes and munitions that we can steady bombard these assholes from sun up to sun down until they just pray that we kill them.

”General?” I call out again. ”Repeat my order,” I plea to him, hoping they’re reading me back on board the carrier.

”Six more je…….. ore bombers,” he replies.

”Two waves, copy?”

”Roger………….”

Why I didn’t think of it while I was still aboard, I’ll never know and I’m hoping this doesn’t cost us. The other planes will catch up by the time we’re ready to open fire, but even still. This lapse in judgment might cost lives for the good guys.

”Hey mate?” Jim’s voice comes through my headset in his thick British accent. ”They heard your orders loud and clear.”

”Are they away yet?”

”Second wave getting set to launch now,” he informs me. ”What’s your plan out there?” he asks.

I don’t answer immediately. ”You remember in Thrones when Dany hit Kings Landing?” I ask of my best friend.

”Of course mate,” he replies. ”Even though we’ve always maintained that that series ended when the Night King used Viserion to melt the wall.”

”You got that right,” I say with a chuckle. ”When she hit Blackwater Bay and Euron’s fleet with Drogon...”

”Our baby boy,” he interjects, feigning emotional pride.

”She used a death from above kind of tactic,” I say with a laugh. ”They’re focused on the sea and Leviathan while we’re coming almost straight down from above.”

”Your controls work, right?” he asks.

”Yeah of course bro,” I reply quickly.

”Mate I remember Poland,” he says, referring to my first foray into leading the military when I was just a teenager. ”Those controls didn’t work so well and you had to eject.”

”You know I hadn’t thought about that in years,” I call back to him. ”Thank you so kindly for reminding me of the only time I was shot down.”

”I just want you landing safely on the flight deck in one piece mate,” he informs me. ”If we lose you it’s only a matter of time before the Ares Project wipes us all out.”

”Buddy you ought to know by now...”

”What’s that?”

”Plot armor keeps me alive,” I joke.

”Plot armor?” he laughs. ”And all this time I thought it was divine intervention,” he jokes back.

”If there is a God, Jim, I don’t thing he’s intervening on my behalf.”

”Probably up there with the apostles eating popcorn and rooting for the Ares Project.”

”Alright bro,” I say with a laugh. ”It’s go time.”

”Hit ‘em hard mate, be safe.”

Without another word from either of us, my crew dips beneath a cloud. Far below us, the Ares Project fleet is hunting down Leviathan.

WEEKS AGO

While the men and women of my armed forces ramp up their training in preparation for going to sea, Jim and I spend a lot of time together. Neither of us know how much time he has left and my own stubbornness caused us to lose the first several months of his disease. It’s all bittersweet, to be perfectly honest. Throughout your life, its far more common to not know when your time is up. When someone passes away, it’s more often sudden and unexpected. Their loved ones struggle to come to terms with the loss. Maybe that’s the root cause of my coldness toward him in those first few months. He was gonna let me lose him suddenly.

Having had time since then to think about things, I wish I had confronted him about it sooner. He’s family to me and instead of spending as much time as we possibly could together in his last months or year of his life, we ended up spending the majority of that time separated. I’ll regret that until my own dying breath.

”Mate, you remember before you were King and you were just the Minister of State?” he asks as we stroll the perimeter. I nod my response, smiling warmly. ”We had that official visit to Scotland and they gave you that warm tribute to Father Asmodeus?” he reminds me.

”Yeah that was somethin’ else bro.”

”You wore that kilt to the show and complained for two hours how much it itched your nether regions,” he reminds me with a chuckle.

”I didn’t know you were supposed to wear stuff underneath,” I give him a chuckle of my own. “No one told me.”

”You did discover your love of Bagpipes though.”

”I’m itching right now just thinking of that fucking kilt,” I reply before switching gears. ”And the Bagpipes though… god what a beautiful sound.”

”You remember, that was also the first time you ever got drunk?” he continues to reminisce. ”The Premier gave you this real expensive bottle of Scotch and we drank it on the plane on the way to Germany.”

”I’ve had concussions Jim,” I begin my retort. ”A few of them, and I’ve never had a worse migraine than after drinking that fucking Scotch,” I say with a life.

”That’s when shit got real,” he stops in stride, taking shallow but increasingly deeper breaths while clutching his chest.

”You alright?” I ask, stopping to help any way I can while placing my hand on his shoulder.

”Palpitations,” he says with a nod.

”That happen a lot?” I ask with genuine concern in my voice.

”It didn’t used to,” he answers while leaning over and placing his hands on his knees in an effort to rest and let his fluttering heart calm down. ”These started about a month ago, maybe six weeks,” he explains. ”But they’ve gotten worse.”

”C’mon Jimmy, let’s just sit,” I tell him while helping him to the ground. ”Why’d you never get treatment?”

”Because I refused to see the doctor for too long,” he answers while his heartbeat slows. ”When you fake fired me to force me to go to a doctor, it was already metastasized to my heart,” he explains.

”I don’t really know what that means,” I admit to him.

”The cancer had already spread to my heart,” he explains further. ”They could have done surgery to try and remove it, but the odds were slim that there’d be enough heart left to… you know… live. So I chose not to have treatment.”

”If you chose treatment though, maybe you wouldn’t be leaving so soon,” I say as a tear escapes my eye.

”Maybe not mate, but I know what happens with cancer treatment,” he says as he leans forward. ”Treatment might give you a few months, maybe another year but at what cost?”

”I don’t know a lot about cancer,” I admit to him.

”The treatment usually makes you deathly ill for weeks at a time,” he attempts to expand. ”What’s the point of prolonging the pain and agony? What’s the point of adding six months or so when you’re stuck in bed for more than half of it because you can’t fucking move?”

With a tilt of my head and a quick raise of my eyebrows, I concede to his points without verbal confirmation. Instead, I sit beside my closest ally, my best friend in the entire world thinking about what’s quite literally eating him inside. And it breaks my heart.

”I don’t want to sit here anymore,” he says as he rolls to his hands and knees. Standing up quickly, I grab a hold of both of his hands and help him to his feet. ”You know, this is part of the reason I wasn’t telling you,” he says with a smile and a bit of a laugh. ”You ought not be focused on me right now and you are. That’s what I didn’t want.”

Slowly, we resume strolling the perimeter. ”Yeah well, some things are more important than McGovern and his band of failed American soldiers,” I say while wrapping my arm over his shoulder. ”You’re way more important.”

”But I’m not really,” the sickly Englishman protests. ”Your priority needs to be wiping out the Ares Project once and for all.”

”I’mma get to it,” I reply facetiously as if I were a young teenager being scolded for keeping a messy bedroom.

”I’m serious mate,” he stops suddenly, throwing my arm off his shoulder. ”You need to stop fucking around and end those scumbags.”

Once he was finally let go from his duties as my Chief of Staff, his replacement, Dick Small, advised me to keep him on in a national security advisor kind of role, but I didn’t because I wanted him to just enjoy whatever life he had left without the pressures of helping me run a fucking nation. As such, he’s no longer privy to sensitive information like what’s coming down the pike in relation to the Ares Project.

”Coming soon to a battlefield near you,” I say with a smile. He smiles back and we resume our walk and talk.

”Do you ever regret wresting control of the Illuminatus from your father?” he asks me.

I shake my head slowly. ”Only every fucking day,” I joke.

”It was that night in Scotland,” he reminisces. ”You got the secure call from one of the Generals, I forget which...”

”It wasn’t a General,” I interrupt. ”It was Commander Brunson,” I remind him with a hand over my heart.

”Right, yeah… Brunson,” he remembers. He too places a hand over his heart. Brunson was killed in action last year when the Ares Project attacked the base in Berlin. ”That call changed everything.”

After the war in Italy and leading our men to victory in my second war securing Vatican City as an Illuminatus stronghold, which still exists to this day, and after my grandfather passed and my dad ascended to the throne, he saw fit, in his infinite wisdom, to remove me from military operations and switched me to the Minister of State role. I didn’t mind that role but he took me away from leading the military.

The military hated the move because even as a teenager, I just had this remarkable mind for warfare. Strategically, I was a golden boy and not once did I ever ask something of my men that I wasn’t also willing to do myself. Whether it was in the trenches on the front lines or flying air missions, I was in the middle of it all. It earned their love and respect. It earned their loyalty.

As such, when my father made the unforgivable mistake of bombing an ISIS hideout without confirming the intelligence, the military asked me to take the reigns and they’d help me do it. We’re a lot of things, both good and bad, but child murderers we are not and that suspected ISIS stronghold, was actually a school for children.

My father sent nearly 300 Iraqi children to their graves that day.

I laugh out loud a moment. ”You tried telling me it was treason,” I recall. ”You remember what I told you?”

”That it’s only treason if we lose,” he says with a very slight laugh.

”That decision, from a leadership standpoint… it was easy,” I tell him. ”But as a son… it was the single hardest decision I’ve ever made.”

”Oh, I know it,” he agrees.

”It’s hard to fathom giving the green light to kill your own father if it came to it...” I stop suddenly as I realize Jim is no longer beside me. Turning to find him, I notice he’s about ten feet behind me, again leaning over with his hands on his knees.

”You alright?” I ask of him. It’s a silly question, of course he’s not alright. Regardless, he doesn’t answer. ”The palpitations again, Jim?”

”Thad,” he looks at me before standing upright while clutching his chest. ”Get a doctor.”

No sooner does he utter his plea, and he collapses to the ground gasping for air.

”JIM!” I cry out as I rush over to him. Sliding to my knees, I cradle his head in my arms as he continues to gasp for air. ”SOMEBODY HELP!”

PRESENT DAY

”Gentlemen,” I call over my radio. ”Acquire your designated targets,” I instruct them. Pointing the nose of my fighter toward the ship at the point of the hunt for Leviathan, I steady my path. Taking a peek to my left and right, my fellow fighters are doing the same. In what amounts to a steep dive, the warning alarms are sounding, breaking my concentration. With a flip of a switch, the alarm falls silent. A moment later, my weapons system is locked on the target.

”Fox One, Fox Two!” I call out, launching missiles toward the enemy ships. Streaks of light lead my jet and those alongside me, to their intended target. A moment later, fireballs erupt from the decks of several warships.

Swooping down, we pull up the noses of our crafts and fire our guns as we fly above the enemy ships. Many men run for their lives. So many of them are cut down as they try and retreat. All of it warms my very cold heart. Say what you will about me. I make no apologies for killing people that would give their lives in an effort to kill me and my children.

By the time we reach the end of the fleet, they’ve begun engaging their anti-aircraft batteries. Your only defense during battle such as this is dipping low above the water and below their decks. It sounds dangerous, but it really isn’t if you know how to fly. My pilots are seasoned veterans in their fourth war now. When a fighter pilot straps in and pulls down the canopy, you become less human and more machine. The jet and its controls become an extension of you. In my experience, its a thrill and a feeling unmatched in any other type of warfare.

Escaping out the backside of the fleet as they fire errant rockets and cannon fire in our direction, we perform a long arching sweep out of the Triangle just in time to watch the ship Leviathan torpedoed earlier, slip beneath the waves taking hopefully thousands of Ares Project terrorists to their watery graves.

What we’re quickly learning, is that they’re really not well trained in regards to anti-aircraft defense. While I’m unsure whether it’s just their nerves or their anxiety as it pertains to staring down my air force, they’re firing the wrong fucking rockets. It’s hard to tell at this speed what they’re using, but they should be using heat seeker missiles.

I gotta teach these fuckers everything.

Flying high again above the clouds as we near the tail end of the enemy fleet, the second wave enters the fray firing their missiles and cannons into the ships.

”General?” I call into the radio. ”Send out as many as we can. These jackasses aren’t using heat seekers.”

”The problem is fuel Sir,” he replies quickly. ”Landing these jets back on deck takes a lot of effort, manpower, and time. Send out too many and some jets my expel their fuel while waiting to land.”

Being a rookie in relation to naval warfare, I hadn’t considered that.

”How many more can we send while being comfortable with fuel and landing capacity?”

”We’re at our limit Sir,” the General replies. ”Naval warfare today, you send out a handful of jets at the most.”

”Thank you General,” I reply to him and no sooner do I do so and the jet next to me is blown out of the sky. ”FUCK! I shout out. ”Gentlemen, after this pass, we’re out of missiles. Stay with me and provide covering fire for the bombers. They switched to heat seekers so be ready for the flares.”

”On my mark,” I call out as we steep dive again toward the rear end of the fleet. ”Fox Three, Fox Four!” With the missiles away, we watch the streaks as they impact their targets before pulling up and begin firing again on the decks of the different ships.

The first bomber flies in, dropping its payload on the enemies. Some strike their targets, some fall into the ocean unimpeded. On one ship, there’s a gaping hole in its deck before the bomb explodes inside its hull, blowing the stern to pieces. It sinks to the bottom in less than five minutes while my heart smiles.

For what its worth, this first wave of battle doesn’t take all that long. Maybe a half hour before its time to fly back to the Vengeance and get reloaded. As instructed, the pilots under my command stay with me as we provide covering fire for the bombers. There were fourteen Ares Project ships when we started this. They’re down to eight and my own fleet hasn’t even arrived to the battle yet.

Aside from the one jet they managed to take out, they downed a bomber and three other jets. To be honest, it’s a small price to pay to ensure the complete annihilation of the Ares Project. With all crews now en route back to the carrier, I stay behind making a few circles around the fleet and survey the damage. There’s crews trying desperately to put out the fires but just one ship managed to escape almost fully intact and unabated. The one hunting Leviathan who by now, has gone beneath the surface in an effort to save themselves.

At the end of my flyover as I’m headed back toward the carrier, my incoming missile warnings begin. One, then three, then eight. At first, I just try to fly out of range but I don’t have the fuel left to go supersonic and also make it back to the carrier. Instead, I just wait as long as I can before dropping my flares.

Peeking behind me, the enemy heat seekers chase the flares as I continue on to my destination.

DAYS AGO – WOOLWORTH TOWER

A couple weeks ago, back at the Compound, Jim had a major heart attack. 25 years old is way too young to die from cancer and its certainly way too young to suffer a major heart attack. The field medics rushed to help and a helicopter was called in. We had him at the emergency room in New Haven in less than fifteen minutes. I commend those doctors and medical professionals. They fought long and hard and lost Jim three times before bringing him back to me again.

It’s torture.

I’m completely helpless to stop what’s happening to him and I wish I could take it all away and make him feel good again. After a few days in the cardiac ward, he demanded his release. I’m not sure if it was toughness or stubbornness, but either way, he insisted he didn’t want to die in the hospital. I’m not sure I blame him. So, two days later, we took him home to New York and hired live-in nurses to tend to him.

Since he’s been home, I really haven’t left his side for very long. He sleeps a lot now, but a lot of that has to do with the morphine drip he’s on. So I sit here by his side, and I hold his hand while he slips in and out of consciousness.

Knowing I was due to leave for battle in a few hours and fearing that he might… pass before I return, I instructed his nurse to turn down his drip so I could get him awake for a few minutes.

”Mmmmmmmmm,” he groans as he comes to.

”Hey,” I say while quiet tears flow down my cheeks.

”Mate,” he says quietly.

”How are you feeling?” I ask stupidly, regretting it immediately. Even before I finished.

”Like…….. death,” he answers slowly.

”Do you feel it?” I ask before pausing. ”I mean, even when you’re unconscious?”

He darts his eyes toward me and nods slowly.

”I’m sorry buddy,” I say with a sniffle.

”Been better…...” he begins. His breath and his pain causes him to break up his own speech. ”If they……….. let me die……… in the E.R.”

”That’s my fault,” I say apologetically. ”I was selfish and wasn’t ready yet.”

Through his pain and suffering, he shoots me the slightest of smiles and squeezes my hand.

”I’m sorry I woke you up, mate. I just didn’t want...” my voice trails off. Trying hard to stop myself from breaking down, I look away from him.

That does not work.

”I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,” I say to him through my sobs. ”I was afraid that if I went to battle you’d go and I wouldn’t be here.”

”I under…….. stand,” he replies, fighting through his pain. Even on his deathbed, he capitulates to me.

”Is your pain a ten?” I ask him while I compose myself. At first he doesn’t answer me. ”Jim, I need to know.”

”Times five,” he answers. His breathing is very labored and his chest heaves up and down. ”Take it………… away,” he pleads.

I nod my understanding. ”I’ll have the nurse put you back under,” I reply as a reach for his call button. He grabs my hand with his free hand and despite his sickness, his grip is strong. Looking up at him, he shakes his head slowly.

”What? I thought you said...” I stop myself from finishing my thought as I realize what he’s getting at. ”I can’t,” I answer him as my uncontrollable water works continue to flow.

”Even…… asleep,” he pleads. ”It hurts so much,” he cries out quickly as tears of his own fall from his eyes.

”Jim… I just...”

”It’s mercy,” he says, and he’s right.

”I can up the morphine and...”

”Too slow,” he protests. ”I’ll just….. suffer unconscious….. until it works.”

”How else would I...”

”Your pistol,” he interrupts and I just stare at him blankly for several moments. I sit quietly staring at him while he stares back at me. Thinking to myself what he’s going through, I try to put myself in his shoes and imagine if I were the one suffering. There’s few things quicker and more painless than a bullet through the brain.

Reaching for the holster on my thigh, I unsnap the strap and relieve it from its rest. Pulling the pistol out, I look at it and then at Jim.

”Here,” he says while weakly touching his temple.

Hesitantly, I nod my agreement and release the safety before pulling back the hammer. Taking a moment to once again compose and steel myself, with shaky hands I place the barrel against his head.

”I’d do…….. the same for you….” he says in a futile attempt to ease my apprehension.

”I know you would,” I reply with a sniffle. ”I love you mate,” I say to him while I continue to weep.

”I love……… you too,” he says with a squeeze of our hands.

After a sniffle, I close my eyes.

Fade to black.

POP!

It’s fascinating to me Mark, that you would entertain the idea of having assassins run me down in a bus. Not only is that clever and a little funny, it’s also really telling to me. Imagine being the great Mark Flynn but also being just crazy enough to attempt murder on your opponents.

He was joking…. of course he was joking.

I mean, how would it look if the greatest wrestler of yesterday was challenged by the greatest wrestler of today AND tomorrow, the yesterday greatest hesitantly accepted such a challenge to perform against the today and tomorrow greatest… then resort to trying to have him killed before the big match has a chance to take place?

Not well, I think.

No, Mark is not having me killed.

Well, probably not.

He says he’s excited to face me and he should be. I am one hundred percent convinced that I’m the best fucking thing since sliced bread… even better than sliced bread if you ask me… and there’s really never a shortage of potential opponents. So the question on tap, is why Mark Flynn? Why did I spend two months going out on Warfare and trying to coax the SECOND most hated man in the XWF out of retirement and back into the ring to face yours truly?

The answer isn’t all that complicated. The fact is, while there’s never a shortage of opponents, I am however, running low on opponents that challenge me. I mean, really challenge me. The barrel is running empty on opponents that can take me to the limit and I don’t know Mark Flynn well enough to know if he really can take me to the very limit or not. What I do know, is that once upon a time he was a special talent within the landscape of the Xtreme Wrestling Federation and I have watched a few of his past matches to see just what he’s capable of.

He was good.

Damn good, in fact.

So good that I’d go out on a limb and say he was almost as good between the ropes as I am and while that may sound like I’m inflating my own ego or giving Mark a backhanded compliment, the truth is… it’s just a compliment. I know how fucking good I am when it comes to the action between the ropes and the only person, the only person, that I have faced so far in my career that I can even begin to consider a peer, as in, on my level, is Chris fucking Page.

That’s elite company.

Say what you want about him, say what you will about me… the fact of the matter is, promos aside, there isn’t a soul on the planet that can touch either of us when the bell rings and we go to work. Is Mark on that same level? I won’t know for sure until Sunday night when he’s standing across from me.

Therein lies the intrigue for me. He was good but is he still? Aside from the Wizard, he’s been stuck teaming with his little North Korean sidekick and it’s far harder to tell in tag team bouts just what someone is working with.

Do not misunderstand me because I have scouted him up, down, sideways, front and back. His matches in the past, his current matches, I’ve scouted them all so I know exactly what I’m dealing with. He certainly couldn’t out-wrestle me at War Games when I removed his mask.

Mark Flynn presents a new and unique challenge though, and I very much look forward to putting him down at Relentless. If I said I didn’t know I’d win all along I’d be lying, but facing someone you’ve never faced and who, at least at one time, was considered one of the best, is what this is about for me. How many times will the Rel Dixon’s and Ciela Luiz’s claim they want to face me, then get sent back down to the gutter where they belong when they inevitably realize they bit off way more than they can possibly fucking chew?

In my very experienced opinion though, Mark Flynn is making a very fatal mistake as it pertains to this match and everything we’re doing leading up to it. You all know what that is because it’s plain as day and I don’t even need to explicitly state what that mistake is. What’s more is, he knows its a mistake.

One promo in and he’s already resorting to Ned Kaye levels of desperate gimmicks in order to combat me. As fun and entertaining as those can be, they lack real substance in doing our jobs… you know… promoting the fact we have a match at all.

What it seems like to me is that he’s scouted me well enough to know that in the Iron Man match at Relentless, he’s in major fucking trouble. So much trouble that he’s abandoned all hope of seriously promoting this match up and instead, has chosen to ride it out until the end. He’ll no doubt give me the fight I want, but no matter how good he thinks he is, Flynn just doesn’t have enough to outclass the master classman of professional wrestling.

The way I see it, he’s already about three steps behind. And as of this moment, he just fell back two or three more.

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode Lionheart & Soul - Part 2: RP #2
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