Post by johnmwhite on Dec 1, 2011 12:56:22 GMT -5
--One hour after being apprehended by lightning fast local LEOs and conveniently placed security guards, Andrea is outside the cop shop and back in uniform. A nurse's uniform, 50s-retro-style, black and white. Appropriate it is, too, since she tends to her own wound, pressing a bloody bandage to her temple where a ninja threw a phone at her like a shuriken. A man approaches, bald and limping, and drapes a purple sports coat over her shoulders.--
John Michael White: You're lucky you have a very good attorney.
Andrea: Don't start.
--The pair walk along the sidewalk in a street near-deserted. Cars lie parked in ragged rows, but half of them are on blocks and two or three are burnt out. One sits with a clump of masonry, contorted like a stone gargoyle, embedded in its windshield. It's almost as if the town around them was falling apart at the seams.--
John Michael White: So she escaped. Outfought you, twice, outwitted you, was great enough to wriggle out of the bonds tied by what is clearly some kind of kinky nun, and get out of a burning wooden box without a scratch.
--Andrea sighs.--
John Michael White: She is a veritable little Mary Sue, isn't she? So graceful, so beautiful, so deadly. So perfect. Completely invulnerable. Why, it's absolutely foolish of me to have done anything to her and expected any other outcome but my humiliating defeat and for the ship to right itself, for the status quo to reign again.
Andrea: John, you're getting testy.
John Michael White: Not testy. Testing. I was testing, and I am grateful for the part you played in my experiment.
Andrea: Like the part where I pretended to let her kick my ass, twice, and the part where I made her bonds loose so she could escape so you wouldn't blatantly murder someone on live TV?
John Michael White: Oh, come now. You mean to tell me you weren't trying, that you were simply toying with her? Andrea, you're bigger than that. And meaner. The coffin thing, well, obviously you knew better than to actually leave her helpless. But she has had training, my dear. Amazing, magical, ninja training by the best. Or at least by the Standard. And that makes her far beyond your match.
Andrea: Ugh, it's like DreamKiller all over again.
--The pair reach a car. It's black, naturally, but otherwise nondescript. Certainly not a solid gold limo or a radioactive green Hummer or a private jet. I think it might be a Ford. John Michael White opens the passenger door for his nurse. As she sits inside, he hands her his cane.--
John Michael White: The results are in. The Worships confirmed my hypothesis.
--The nurse tosses the cane in the back and pulls on her seatbelt.--
Andrea: That getting a phone in the face really hurts?
John Michael White: That REW is dying. The cancer has metastasised. Not even House can save this patient.
--The REW World Champion (5 months, 6 days) limps over to the driver's side. He takes his seat, pulls on the belt, while continuing his train of thought.--
John Michael White: We are dealing with the same cookie-cutter pawns as we dealt with all my career. And the pawns all want to be kings, but the problem is, a king can still only move one square at a time. They cannot keep up, they cannot adapt. They are inflexible. And when you have a board full of kings, you realise... they're still all pawns.
Andrea: My head hurts too much to deal with your rambling analogies right now. Out with it, please.
John Michael White: Blake Worship is, disappointingly, not any different from anyone else. But, as with everyone else, he thinks he is. The Worships think they are invincible and they live in a protective little bubble that will shield them from ever losing to me.
Andrea: You can take Blake Worship.
John Michael White: On a good day, probably. There are no guarantees... except that should I win, he won't acknowledge it. Just as he won't acknowledge that other people were in the queue before him for a piece of the champions. I thought I had finally stirred something real in him, something visceral and brutish, that might give us an interesting contest. But the phone-tap that I had installed for the purposes of narrative convenience gave me a little more insight - he doesn't care. He isn't threatened by me, he isn't driven by insecurity or that need to prove himself. He thinks he already has, and that means he won't fight for his life like I do, every time I'm out there. He's not even fighting for his wife's life, because it was never in danger. There is nothing for him to sacrifice for.
Andrea: So what are you going to do?
John Michael White: I'm going to pull the plug.
--JMW slams the door and drives into the rainy Detroit night.--
