What's going on in TCW lately? Here's where to find the details. Post here only if you have permission or have talked to the powers that be about your involvement in the storyline.

The rain lashed down from a tortured sky, pounding with arhythmical fury on bare earth. Broken, dry ground soaked up the water, but the land had been dead too long for anything to feed on it and grow. Instead, dust simply turned to sludge.

A baroque shape strode through the storm. A flash of lightning illuminated the hard, feral shape of its rotting face: jagged teeth bared in a rictus of hate, pinprick eyes that had watched the rise and fall of civilisations.

Pale knuckles tightened on the hilt of a curved sword.

"The eye of the storm..."

Skaar could see the low, brooding shape of the mesa on the horizon. In the sky above it, the tempest that had engulfed Nevada on and off for months had been whipped into a black frenzy, swirling into an unnatural spiral of writhing storm clouds. It was focused on the forbidding shelf of rock, where the ruins of a military base still stood. For the last two years, this remote site had borne witness to events that had shaken the foundation of reality. Tonight, it would witness one more.

The vampire made his way to the top of the complex, where a shelf of steel projected over the wide expanse of red stone. Here, the metal surface was damaged as if by some huge blast. Where Skaar walked, the steel seemed to buckle beneath his armoured feet. Rust spread out in tiny, inexorable tendrils.

He knelt down. There were the remains of some great beast here. Skaar lifted part of a horned skull in his hands.

"What's that?"

He turned to his companion. The lean, drawn-faced werewolf was crouched down low. He had changed since his master had found him again: his formerly bright eyes had lost their lustre, and his dark hair hung lank across pale skin that was now puckered by sore-looking blemishes.

"It is the remains of a god."

"Which god?"

Skaar straightened and cast down the fragment of bone. "His name was Abbadon."

"What could kill a god?"

Skaar didn't answer. Instead, he began to look around the tower, searching for the object of his quest. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and spots of rain started to fall again. Bronson shied away, cringing.

Finally, the vampire lord seemed to find what he was looking for. He reached down into a heap of twisted metal, grabbing what appeared to be another piece of bone, but he pulled it out and revealed it as something very different. A dark, twisted blade, almost as long as the vampire was tall, was in his hand. As Skaar looked into its strangely textured surface it began to glow a dull green colour.

"What's that?" Bronson asked again.

"It is the Sword of Heroes."

"Right..."

"And with it, I will ensure that this Azrael...will be the last one..."

* * *

"So..."

"So..."

Darkness and Freya stood opposite one another in the corridor outside their respective locker rooms. Both of them were cleaned up after their match, Freya sporting a hastily applied plaster over the cut on her forehead.

"I'm not leaving TCW you know."

"I figured. Is there a reason besides stubbornness?"

Darkness smiled wryly. "Gawain came and talked to me. He seemed to think that me being on television and having fans was an important part of my destiny."

Freya nodded. "I can see where he's coming from...maybe..."

"Plus, if I'm a public figure, I have a certain amount of protection. Look at what happened to Keening."

"Yes, that is a good point. I suppose..."

"Oh stop qualifying everything."

"Do you really think I'm every going to let you win something decisively?"

Darkness laughed and shifted his belts on his shoulders. "Yes, about that. It seems like you have something of a claim on my World Titles."

"True. On the other hand, you pinned me when I was bleeding."

"That's true."

Freya tapped her fingers against her own belt, which she was wearing around her waist. "Do you want the Bleeder Title?"

"Not really. Do you want the World Titles?"

"I only wanted them so you wouldn't have them. So no, not anymore."

"Call it even?"

"Deal." Freya extended a hand and Darkness shook it with his own good one.

"Deal," he agreed.

* * *

The large, sheet-metal loading bay doors of the hospital collapsed inwards as the explosives ripped through them. The Shadow Slayers stepped through the charred remains, the bright headlights from their armoured vehicle bathed them in a blue-white glow. As the first vampires pounded out to meet them, they recoiled from the light, and then collapsed into burning ash as the weapons of their assailants ripped through them, each bullet and crossbow quarrel targeting their vulnerable hearts and punching through their black-lacquered armour.

Marta Hayes dashed forward, casting around for more foes. The doors leading from the platform that would be level with delivery trucks if the hospital wasn't derelict were wide open, and her Slayer Sense told us that, in the maze of corridors beyond, there were more vampires.

"Team One, with me!" she ordered, and half a dozen of her companions jogged up beside her. She found herself uneasy that John wasn't with them, but she pushed down her emotions and steeled herself as she had a thousand times before. She moved towards the open door, levelling her crossbow in case any more enemies showed themselves. Behind her, three Slayers activated the torch attachments on their assault rifles, casting three bobbing spotlights of brightness on the far wall.

"Team Two," she bellowed across the loading bay, "move into position. You hold this ground, understand? Hold this ground!"

The other Slayers took up their positions, spreading out to cover every possible field of fire in the wide, open area.

"We're going to hunt them down," Marta explained to her team as she brushed a strand of hair from her face, revealing her pearly-white, blinded left eye for just a moment, "we can Sense them, but they don't know where we are, or how many of us are here."

"Right." Jack Dane had a pistol in one hand and his rapier in the other. "Any other standing orders?"

"No. Slay at will. And stick together. No one needs to be a hero tonight."

The seven of them entered the hospital proper, immediately finding themselves in narrow, twisting passages. Marta tilted her head, and felt the telltale signals that were rapidly approaching them. They zigzagged erratically, and she knew they would come from both sides. Wordlessly, the Slayers divided into two groups, facing both ways down the corridor that ran perpendicular to the loading bay. A screeching sound heralded the first group of vampires, bounding at them from the right, blades raised.

A volley of shots ploughed through them, shattering their brittle bodies, and slaying two of them instantly. Now they came from the left, and the scene was repeated. One vampire got close enough to feel Jack's blade, and went down screaming.

"Hold here until the first wave stops," Marta growled, "then we move on."

The Slayers took advantage of the brief lull to adopt firing positions, training their weapons on the corners around which the vampires would come. And come they did: with high pitched, bestial noises, recoiling for an instant at the blinding light of the torches and then falling to the rain of bullets.

Suddenly, Marta's head jerked upwards. In her haste to secure the holding bay and this entrance to the hospital, she had forgotten the floors above them. A cluster of signals were rapidly descending towards them. She saw the grate above their heads.

"They're in the air vents!" she shouted, just as three vampires burst through and fell amongst them. They lashed out, killing two Slayers before any of them could react. Marta yanked a stake from her belt and thrust it into the chest of the closest one as Jack turned around and cut another to ribbons with his rapier. The third creature leapt past them, diving through the door into the loading bay, only to be blown to pieces by a hail of fire from the second team.

"This ain't exactly an advantageous spot," Jack remarked.

"Agreed. We're going to have to push forward."

More vampires were now closing from all three directions.

"Which way?"

Marta paused. "Right."

Jack grinned. "Any particular reason?"

"Not really."

"Good enough for me."

The other surviving Slayers got to their feet, leaving their fallen comrades where they lay. "Kal, you take rearguard. You're on point, Jack."

"Figures."

The team, now reduced to only five members, pushed on into the dark expanse of the abandoned hospital.

* * *

"Senator MacDonald..."

MacDonald stood up, smiling and met the handshake of the suited man who had just entered his office. The room, in one wing of MacDonald's moderately sized mansion just outside Phoenix city limits, was well lit by large windows that offered a panoramic view of the Salt River Valley.

"Congressman Daniels. Good to see you again. Do you have the file?"

Daniels placed it on MacDonald's desk. "This is all the information we have."

MacDonald sat down. "Why don't you summarise for me..."

"It's the same story every time," Daniels explained as he took a seat opposite the Senator and began to fan out the contents of the file, "they pump them full of steroids so they can perform every night and, eventually, it just catches up with them."

MacDonald nodded sagely. "So it's the nature of the business, is that what you're saying?"

"Exactly. We're not looking at isolated cases, we're looking at a global trend that has to do with the way the professional wrestling industry is run."

"So what's the answer? Do we force them to unionise?"

Daniels laughed. "What is this? North Korea? No...I'd prefer to go to the source with this..."

"Shut them down?"

"Why the hell not? We'd shut down anyone else with unsafe business practices."

"But that's gonna piss a lot of people off..."

"Rednecks?"

MacDonald chuckled slightly, but his tone was serious. "They're the ones who vote for me."

"And they'll continue to vote for you - you're still the guy who wants them to keep their guns and stop queers getting married."

"And the liberal college kids who watch wrestling too?"

"Never voted for us in the first place. It's win-win."

"Alright," MacDonald shrugged, "whatever. But a few guys dying isn't enough to bring down an entire subculture. Unless you want to ban mining or logging or anything else that costs lives."

"Good point. We could always ban it on grounds of good taste."

"I think we need something more..."

"There is something else. I obtained it from Mr. Novamori."

"Oh right. How is Tom?" MacDonald asked, sitting back in his chair.

"Filthy rich and still on our side."

"That's all I care about."

Daniels passed over a handful of documents and a photograph. "You recall Twisted Championship Wrestling?"

"Of course."

"And the business with...what was it? The New Hellfire Club."

"Yeah. A bunch of retards prancing around pretending to worship Satan. It's like shooting fish in a barrel with these clowns."

"True, but there's something else...take a look at that photo."

MacDonald glanced at it. "Who am I looking at?"

"That's a guy who goes by the name of Darkness."

"Right. I seem to recall something about him. What's the story on him?"

"That's just the problem," Daniels explained, "there doesn't seem to be much of one."

"What are you trying to say?"

"The guy's like a ghost. No social security number, no registered address, no background we can trace, except a bunch of disjointed rumours and police records."

"Police records?"

"Yup. Turns out he's had a few run-ins with the law: on both sides of the Atlantic."

"What? He's British?"

"Apparently, but no one over there was any help either."

MacDonald leant back in his chair and tapped his fingers against his desk and he stared at the picture. "So...there's a high-profile...uh...entertainer who works for one of the largest media corporations in America, and he has no identity. How the heck does that work?"

"Beats me. All the leads we follow on this guy come to dead ends."

"Well, that's weird, sure, and I'm sure it'll be an important part of the case against TCW...employing illegal immigrants isn't going to fly..."

"There's more."

"Oh?"

Daniels slid over another sheet of paper. "Novamori was kind enough to fill in some gaps for us. You ever hear of something called...the Order of Shadow Slayers?"

"The what?"

"Just read, Stephen. It's...interesting stuff..."

Revenant was sitting on the hotel's roof, her legs dangling over the side of the building. Far below her, the heavy traffic of downtown Salvador roared faintly. The sun was setting over the rooftops.

She had nothing to do, and nowhere to go. Bored, she kicked her heels against the brickwork and idly wondered whether slipping off one of her shoes and letting it plummet to earth would cause much harm. On the other hand, making her way to the ground floor in order to retrieve it with only one shoe didn't seem very appealing, so she decided against it.

The sunlight still made her uncomfortable, but it was bearable at this time of day, even if the heat was utterly insufferable. She hadn't experienced heat this bad since her trek through the desert with Bronson almost a year ago. The Louisiana bijou hadn't been much better, but at least the vegetation had provided some kind of shelter from the sun, if not the insects and humidity. Then there was the burning air of Hell, but that had also been strangely cold, like something dry and dead. If she had believed in gods, she would have cursed whichever of them had conspired to send her to places that always seemed to be so hot.

"Whose bright idea was South America anyway?" she asked herself, drawing her knees up below her chin and wrapping her skinny arms around herself, "would a tour of Europe have killed anyone?" Revenant's only experience of Europe - a dank journey through a forest in southern England - had been mercifully cool.

As she sighed to herself, she felt an odd prickling sensation somewhere in the back of her mind. With something like excitement, she realised that it was the dull impression of her still half-formed Slayer Sense detecting someone approaching. She spun around on her perch and faced the door where the sensation was coming from, and adopted her best Darkness face - an expression of utter lack of surprise - as two figures walked out onto the roof.

"Hey, Rev," Gawain greeted her as his companion, the towering Galadd, gave her a cheery wave.

"Hi. What brings you two up here?"

"We were looking for Llenlleawg," Galadd rumbled. He sniffed the air a little, and his shoulders slumped when he realised that his fellow werewolf wasn't present.

"Oh." Revenant shuffled back around and allowed her legs to dangle again.

Gawain approached her and hopped up onto the raised wall that surrounded the flat roof so he stood next to the half-vampire. "It's a little high here, isn't it?"

"Yeah." She glanced up at him. "Why? You scared?"

"Me? Course not." He flashed her a fang-filled grin, "I'm not scared of heights."

"Me neither." Revenant returned her gaze to the streets far below her dangling feet.

"Will you guys get away from there?"

Galadd looked a little uncomfortable, and was still standing halfway between the door and the edge.

"Now him," Gawain said, jerking a thumb at Galadd, "he's scared of heights."

"Hey!"

"You know you are, Gal'. Remember when we were kids? You'd never climb trees with us."

"Wolves don't belong in trees," the huge werewolf protested.

"Monkeys do though," Revenant pointed out with an air of authority, "I saw it on TV. And you guys are still half monkey, right?"

Gawain waggled his eyebrows at Galadd. "She has a point..."

"Well I'm bigger than you two. I'd fall faster and hit the ground much harder. It's more dangerous for me to be up high."

"I don't think falling works that way," Gawain said with a frown as he looked down over the edge.

Revenant just shrugged. "Don't ask me. I never went to school."

After a few seconds, Gawain crouched down next to her. "So...you haven't seen Llenlleawg anywhere?"

"Nope. Sorry."

"We could smell him all up the stairwell," Galadd insisted from behind them, "are you sure he hasn't been up here?"

"I'm not lying," Revenant said in a flat tone, "you should be able to smell that, shouldn't you?"

Gawain didn't reply, but instead continued to stare out across the vista with Revenant as the sun sank slowly below the horizon, turning the whole varied cityscape into a series of blank blocks of shadow against the vibrant orange-pink sky. From their vantage point they were able to see the sunset over the Baía deTodos os Santos.

"I'm worried about him..." Gawain said after a long pause.

"Who?"

"Llenlleawg." There was irritation in his tone, and Revenant realised that he had detected her affected nonchalance.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure he wouldn't give a damn about that."

"Me too. What happened to you two? You used to be so close."

"I've been close to a lot of people," Revenant said, this time not needing to pretend nonchalance, "and it always ended up with them not being close to me...one way or the other..."

"But this is different. You didn't kill Llenlleawg."

The ease with which he broached the sensitive subject of her predatory habits momentarily shocked her. She gave him a dark look and he had the decency to look embarrassed. "Sorry...werewolf..."

It was all the explanation he felt he needed to offer. Werewolves didn't mince their words, since they couldn't conceal their intentions from one another. Their plain speaking ways were always difficult for outsiders to adjust to.

"No, I didn't kill him," she said carefully. Gawain was waiting for more, she could tell - his acute sense of smell knew that the story was more complex than her flat statement had expressed. Galadd had fallen silent. As dusk settled, something seemed to have subdued the conversation. In the dark, Revenant reflected, none of them were human anymore: the werewolves relied increasingly on their animal instincts, and she reclaimed her vampire heritage. Old rivalries were hard to suppress when Shadowspawn gathered in their natural environment.

"I didn't kill him," she said again, "and that's exactly the problem."

"Huh?" Galadd expressed the werewolves' confusion for both of them.

Revenant's shoulders slumped. She leant over to Gawain and pulled back the sleeve of her heavy jacket and unfastened the heavy gauntlet that held one half of her Slayer weapon before holding out her slender, pale wrist to him. "See that?"

"What am I looking at?"

She traced a finger down her ulnar artery. "See this blood vessel? See how it's dark?"

Gawain squinted. Though he had superb night vision, it depended on seeing further into the ultraviolet spectrum, rendering it largely monochromatic. Nonetheless, he could make out the difference. Galadd had now approached and peered over their shoulders.

"When we went to Hell," Revenant explained, "Lucifer kidnapped Llenlleawg and I, and forced me to feed on his blood."

"Gross," Galadd exclaimed with a grimace.

"Llenlleawg thought so too. Things have never been the same since."

"That's ridiculous," Gawain snorted, "why would he hold something like that against you?"

"It's the first time he saw me feed. I figure it doesn't matter that it was Lucifer; the whole business just creeped him out."

"I could always talk to him, try to make him see sense..."

"That's not the only thing that changed after that happened though," Revenant said, feeling a fresh thrill at confiding in someone again after so long.

"Why? What else happened?"

Rev held up her arm and traced a finger along the dark lines of blood vessels again. "Ever since his blood has been in me, I haven't had to feed."

Galadd stared at her wrist in wonder. "You mean he...cured...you?"

"I don't need ‘curing'," Revenant snapped, "and no...nothing permanent has happened I don't think. It's just that his blood was...different."

"Different how?" Gawain asked. Unlike Galadd, he had kept his eyes intently on Revenant's face, reading her emotions carefully with both vision and scent.

"Someone once explained to me that what vampires do isn't about the blood, not really. The blood is just a...a representation...a..."

"A metaphor?" Gawain suggested.

"Something like that, yeah. When we...when they...bite...when they Sire, I mean...they destroy the part of a person that is human. Some people can't take it, and they die. But other people are too strong - there's something in them that makes them more than human - and they get turned into vampires. At least, that's what happens when a real vampire bites. I can't do that stuff."

Gawain nodded. "I get it, but what does this have to do with Lucifer?"

"Right, sorry. I got ahead of myself. Vampires don't live on blood; they live on the stolen humanity. Some people's humanity you can't take ‘cause there's too much god or angel or demon all mixed up in it. Dante is like that. But...I guess I found out that there's another extreme...people who are too human. People who define what that ‘humanity' part really means."

"And Lucifer...?"

"He's one of them. His blood is more...it's sustained me for months, and taking it didn't kill him."

"But Lucifer isn't human," Galadd interjected.

"Tasted like human to me," Revenant shrugged, "tasted like really, really human." She turned back to the darkened sky and stared into the now dying embers of the sun on the horizon.

Gawain let her story digest for a few moments. "So," he said after a while, "do you think you'll ever need to feed again?"

"I don't know. It's not like a timer that ticks down. One day I'm fine, and the next the hunger starts to kick in."

"But you don't need to feed right now?"

"No."

"Well...that's something then..."

"It's something. But it's not much." She held out her wrist once more, "It used to be darker," she said softly, "and now it's almost faded back to the way it used to be. His blood is running out."

"So..."

"Yeah."

Darkness stepped into the skybox. The eight foot tall panes of glass behind the Commissioner's desk provided a panoramic view of the labour that was proceeding apace far below them. Turf was being covered with sheets of some grey material - it at least had the virtue of not being concrete, which would perhaps save a few skulls when the piledrivers started coming thick and fast on the outside. The South American tour had so far been a departure for TCW, in the sense that most of the arenas were vast, open-air affairs, taking advantage of the sparkling weather. Darkness didn't envy the men working under the hot sun though, used to comfortable air-conditioned buildings.

"You wanted to see me?"

Stern looked up from her desk. The mahogany table had a strange sense of permanence about it; it belonged in a panelled room, standing patiently for long enough that it would eventually merge into its surroundings, becoming fossilised in some dusty office. Instead it was jetted around the world, to be carried in to a new skybox by sweating, cursing labourers. Everything else in the makeshift office was also carefully calculated to look like it was a permanent fixture: potted plants in real terracotta bowls instead of cheaper, lighter plastic; contemporary paintings on the wall that were so carefully positioned they belied their transient status. He could have been standing in any skybox in any arena in any country, but it looked like the same one she always used. In a sea of turbulent chaos, here was Valerie Stern and her office, just like always.

"Yes. I'm glad you could fit me into your busy schedule..."

Darkness gave her an arch look. He wasn't late. He hadn't put this meeting off. She had called and he had come - why the hostility? He didn't ask the question though, instead simply taking a seat opposite her. It was a comfortable chair, but dwarfed by her high-backed example. Another woman might have been swallowed up by the black nothingness of such a massive chair, but it seemed to fit her, framing her shock of red hair that was now constrained by a scaffold of hairpins. She tapped long, slender fingers against a bare area of the desk in front of her. Little of the brown-red mahogany was visible, so thick and widespread was the sediment of paperwork, though there was a sense of organisation amongst the mess.

"Let's talk, Darkness."

"About what?"

"About your future in TCW."

"I wasn't aware I had a future in TCW, at least according to your usual rhetoric."

She leant back, drawing her hands together on her lap. "Do you remember when I first came to this promotion, Darkness?"

"Refresh my memory."

"Friction. July 17th 2006. 411fed and ECF became TCW. The first Majestic Cup tournament began. I expect you had a lot on your mind though."

Darkness nodded. The date didn't really mean much to him, but he was aware of the general time period. That Friction - was it in Miami? - had come after Endgame. He did indeed have a lot on his mind then. Dante had taken his belts, he had just found out that he was the Antichrist, and, to top it all off, he had just been arrested. He supposed he thought of it now as a misunderstanding: Cameron Jones had taken him to the brink of the Abyss without even knowing what he had become involved in. He had brutalised the man, both before and during the match, and he regretted it now. But it had allowed important events in his life to take shape - without being imprisoned, Dante would have had nothing to offer him to persuade him to form the New Hellfire Club, and without that...

"I remember," he said impassively.

"I certainly hope so. My first show. My first day as the new boss. As you can imagine, I was paying close attention to the main event, seeing what TCW's finest had to offer. What I saw was a man stepping out of a police van and proceeding to perpetrate what can only be described as an organised mugging of his opponent. You even stole some of his property when it was over!"

"I have no excuse for what happened in the ring that night. It was a complicated time in my life."

"Cute, but I don't care. From the very first moment I saw you, I knew you were a liability. I let you and your Club run riot though, trusting to the merchandise sales. People liked what you were doing, apparently. I let you fight a war in my own fed..."

"Not a war..."

"An extermination?" she finished for him, "Yes, I know. I heard all about that. You threw Ghetto Fire through a door, if I recall. The point is, I let the NHFC and Infinity rip this promotion apart because I thought the ratings were worth it. Now I'm not so sure."

"And you're blaming me for that? Infinity began it; we had no interest in them."

"If it hadn't been them, it would have been someone else though, wouldn't it?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. None of us have any way of knowing how things could have been different if just one small thing was changed."

"True. But however it might have gone, this is how it did go. I didn't like it, the fans didn't like it, and now TCW may be irreparably damaged because of your selfish actions."

"Again...I can't help feeling you're placing too much blame on my shoulders alone..."

"Who else would you like to blame? Dante? Freya? Misfit?"

"David Hardy?"

Stern's face was unreadable, but Darkness could feel the tightening in her muscles with his Slayer Sense. It was just a lucky guess, but it seemed to do the trick.

"As I said, Infinity were never the issue..."

"They mugged the World Champion on live television. He was in a wheelchair at the time, as I'm sure you remember."

"That's not..."

"And you gave them their own pay-per-view as a reward. If we're pointing fingers at those who have contributed to TCW's destruction, I think you might want to look a little closer to home, Ms. Stern."

Her mouth was a flat line bisecting her pale face, the touch of crimson at her lips almost invisible. "I won't deny I've made mistakes. That's exactly what I was coming to. I let you - by which I mean the NHFC and Infinity - fight your private war across my broadcasts. I should have been more careful."

"Yes, you should."

"So," she continued, her cold expression not changing, "I intend to start being more hands-on now."

"I'll look forward to it."

"Good. I'll see you at Havoc."

Darkness stood up, but then paused. "Havoc? Isn't the next show Friction?"

"That's right." She flashed him an icy smile. "But you don't have a match."

"Why not?"

"Because, as of right now, I'm taking you off the air as much as possible."

"You're taking your World Champion off television? That's not going to reflect well on you, I feel."

"I said ‘as much as possible'. Contractually, you're obliged to take part in a certain number of matches per year. I'm cutting your appearances back to those matches only, starting immediately. You'll have a match at Havoc, and of course you'll defend your belt at Stranglehold."

"Belts," he corrected her. "And who am I supposed to defend them against? There's no one left."

"Another good reason to keep you off TV, since you're serving no purpose."

"Except selling merchandise."

"Don't worry about that - we've stopped production of most of the t-shirts with your name on them, and you won't be getting another DVD any time soon. We're weaning the TCW fans off you, Darkness."

"How charitable of you."

"Sooner or later, you'll lose those belts, and then I won't have to deal with you anymore and your fans won't even miss you."

Darkness smiled slightly. "I'm not doing this for the fans, Stern."

She saw the opening, and pounced. "They just why are you doing this?"

"I'm not going to start explaining myself to you now..."

"Damnit!" Her fist slammed into the desk making a surprisingly loud noise, given her lean frame, "I'm your boss, Darkness! My files tell me you're an honourable man, but I don't see any evidence of that. All I see is a dangerous psychopath, keeping his own counsel, doing what he does for reasons that his own employers apparently aren't to be trusted with knowledge of. Doesn't that strike you as strange?"

"Things that are strange to you aren't always strange to me, Stern," Darkness told her softly, "maybe you'll understand that one day."

"And maybe one day you'll understand that I have a business to run. I have quotas to meet and a Board to placate. I can't keep making excuses for you. I can't justify the expense of keeping you on."

"I was given to understand that I was worth it. You're cancelling my merchandise to stop the sales. You're keeping me off TV so it'll be easier to fire me when you've found the person who can take my belts. These aren't the actions of someone on sure ground - if I was costing you money, you wouldn't need any excuse to get rid of me."

"Don't try my patience..."

"Why not? What are you going to do about it? You can't fire me - you would have already. Now you're trying to force me out, cancelling my bookings and pulling my merchandise. I look forward to seeing who you find to challenge me, because there aren't many left that are willing to do your bidding that I haven't destroyed."

"Just get out."

He leant on her desk, his good hand balling into a fist automatically, the prosthetic taking a few seconds to match its position with a whirr. "You know, Stern, before this I was content to treat you as a minor annoyance - a buzzing insect in my ear that I could ignore, or at least swat away if she got too loud. But now you really seem serious about this. A few weeks ago I wouldn't have given a shit about getting fired, but I've had a change of heart. You've begun to push me too far, so perhaps it's time you asked yourself a question...are you really willing to go to war with me? I've beaten stronger men and women than you, and I've weathered far worse storms than you can whip up. If you go against me, the best you can hope for is to survive. Victory is not an option."

Stern snorted. "I'll be sure to add ‘insufferably arrogant' to your file."

He gave her a smile. "Your choice, Stern." He straightened and turned his back on her. He walked slowly towards the door, as if expecting her to say something else, but she didn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, she just watched that old, worn, stinking coat of his and played over in her head the satisfying moment when she wiped the smug look of his face and said those two words so beloved of wrestling promoters and billionaire entrepreneurs everywhere.

March 26, 2008.

8:52PM Brasília time.

"You know, I rather like this city. Plenty of people speak English. Big city lights. White sandy beaches."

TCW Commissioner Valerie Stern stands in her temporary office, facing the large window. Her hands crossed behind her, she overlooks Natal's nighttime cityscape.

A television, the volume down low, shows a brutal scene. David Hardy's head is nearly caved in as he dives head-first into a steel chair.

Standing across the office, facing Stern's back, are senior road agents Jason Fragg and Adam Wilson.

"If things ever really went sour back in the US and we had to make a break for it..."

Her voice trails off.

"But that's neither here nor there. You boys ready to re-introduce DeSean to the fed?"

Quickly turning around to face her agents, Stern has her business face back on. The men nod and escort her outside, towards the ring.

"No fame
All there is
All there was
On the second they
Can't take a cent
Take a cut of that
Kind of rent"

"So, without further delay, allow me to introduce the other challenger for the Aftershock Championship!"

"It's an Infinity reunion!!"

"Maybe not the most friendly meet-up however..."

"No, but DeSean Blackwell is BACK and taking on his former stablemates at Stranglehold!!"



9:32PM Brasília time.

"No, what we're going to do is what we're told to do! Don't pull this 'moral' crap all of a sudden!"

"I told her and you already, and I'll tell ya again: I ain't comfortable with any of this! Blackwell and the chairshot were one thing, but this is taking things way too far!"

Even on the other side of the closed door, Valerie Stern can clearly hear the argument taking place inside her office. She massages her temples for a moment, then extends her hand outward.

"Russell, hi! How'd everything go?"

The hand of TCW Security Head Russell Simmons engulfs the much smaller hand of Valerie Stern. She notices the unusual gentleness of the handshake.

"The boys are all in place. Just waitin' on my signal."

A sigh of relief.

"It's so good to know I can count on someone around here..."

"I'm getting really sick of your bullshit, old man!"

"Oh, for... Put your jacket back on! This ain't the time!"

"Ugh. I really appreciate all you've done around here lately. I know I've asked you to be a little harsher than you'd probably like, but it's good to know you're willing to help maintain order in such a chaotic environment."

The large man smiles slightly.

"Not a problem, ma'am. We have been pretty rough lately, but me an' all the boys definitely have a fond appreciation of the rules. We're not about to let any subversion pass us by."

She smiles back at him.

"That's what I like to hear."

The office door swings out into the hallway, followed shortly by Jason Fragg. The older agent falls to the ground as Stern and Simmons jump out of the way.

In the doorway, an enraged Adam Wilson stands, his body heaving. He charges at Fragg but Simmons intervenes, catching the smaller man, holding him back.

Rising to his feet, Fragg wipes a stream of blood from his lower lip.

"Give it a damn rest already, Adam! You made yer damn point!"

He turns, poking a finger at Stern's chest.

"I dunno what kinda fed you think you're tryin' to run, but this ain't the way to get what you want! You may be the commish here, but you're just one of many! The people really runnin' this place are the wrestlers and the fans who love it! You'd do well to remember that!!"

Fragg punctuates his statement by storming off down the hall, leaving Stern to head towards the ring without him by her side.

I'll stand kind of pushed
Kind of bent
On this heavy land
I'll stand for the sake of my friends
I will see him there


9:57PM Brasília time.

Simmons signals towards the ring, and a string of security guards rushes in from the ramp, backstage, the crowd, everywhere, flooding the ring, surrounding Strikmore and Darkness. Stern and Wilson turn and exit the ramp.

The force of guards quickly begins to subdue Strikmore and, with a little help from a taser, Darkness as well.

"This is flat-out wrong! Stern has taken down Strikmore and the World Champ!"

"How's it wrong? Strikmore broke the rules, and Darkness helped him! They're in the wrong here!"

As the guards begin to haul away Darkness and Strikmore, they conveniently leave a path open. Inferno takes advantage, landing a few choice punches on Strikmore's already beaten body.

"Oh come on! This isn't justice!"

Down
Down
Count me down
Down
Down boy
Down
Count me down
Down boy
Down boy
Down boy
Down