[DA] MISSION STATEMENT - vs. A. Kincaid, R. Bramovic, A. Hill

“Who is Danny Avers?”

The Debt Collector sits in a brown-leathered chair, staring dead ahead into a camera as he crosses hands over hand. He’s dressed quite simply, a pair of blue jeans, patched together, and a bloodied tank-top. His knuckles are exposed, both from the lack of boxing tape upon them and the blisters upon his heavily-used fingers, likely having cracked a fair few skulls in his time. His jeans are tucked into black working boots. His hair and beard are not entirely well-kempt so much as they are controlled. Avers wears a watch on his left wrist, and on his right, the faded bits of an old tattoo can be seen.

“The question asked to the empty air of mausoleums and graveyards, a quandary to the void but not to anyone in particular. You can look through your record books, you can do a background check, you can dig through the archives of towns I’ve come from, but I promise-you won’t find a goddamn thing worthwhile. Try as you will, you might not come away empty handed, but you’ll find only stories of a fool who got in far too deep over his head, far too young to do what he did. Mistakes, of course, I’ve made plenty of ‘em. I’m sure we all have, but few of ours remain permanently burnt into our flesh, a scarlet letter torpedoing our future before it can really take flight.

Not fair, is it?”

Avers cracks his knuckles as he continues speaking, his voice not grimy nor grating, but deep. Hollow. A soft sadness as he speaks on his past, but it’s barely perceptible beneath the sawblade’s edge at the top of it. Still, not sharp enough to sever, but jagged enough to draw blood.

“My past isn’t something I’m proud of. I’ve made plenty of missteps, learned far too late that two wrongs couldn’t make a right, learned far too deep in that what I was doing might end me up trapped-be it in a cage of iron or a box of cedar-and I nearly lost the gamble I’d taken on myself. You can fight all your life, you can be damn good at it, just like I was, but the system drags you down to the soil, hands ‘round your limbs, holding you in place harder than you could hold any other man down. The system ties a noose around your throat and drags you across every stone in the road. It leaves you chewed up and battered, and, as if the physical damage wasn’t enough, it marks you for death. Not immediate-for most of us, anyway-but slow. Can’t fend for yourself. Can’t rely on anyone. People look at you and they look away.

It makes you a pariah. Bottom of the barrel, licking up the scraps that others who might have a modicum of pity dump down onto you. That’s where I was, on my knees hunting for anything I could find. I couldn’t hold a job down-even when I got hired, they never trusted me, and rent would never come on time. For a while, I found myself bumming from place to place. I found myself cast out, unable to find a home, unable to find cash to feed myself, the water coming over my head, threatening to drown me, filling my lungs and my throat...and then they threw me a life preserver. They didn’t pull me out, but they gave me the tools to pull myself out.”

Avers’ eyes meet the camera. They’re hollow, but not cold. A soft fire burns therein, the stoked coals that you think would snuff out if left to cool, but that are simply waiting to ignite into a wildfire. Avers grits his teeth into a half-hatched smile as he continues.

“She said her name was Jane Doe. Not the most identifiable name, and even if it’s fake, it suits our relationship, well, nicely. It started with a coffee, then a ride through the rain, and then a place to lay my head. Nothing was without a price, however, and I realized that rather quickly. She made that clear nearly from the beginning-anything she gave me, I would be paying her back for. She also made it clear that I owed a debt before she’d even set eyes upon me, before she’d given me what she had. All of us do, walking the streets at night or in the day. We’re all bogged down by our debts, and I’m not just speaking physically, or monetarily. We get enough reminders of those day in and day out, right? Student loans, mortgages, bills, car payments...the list goes on and on, small pieces of paper stacking up into a crushing weight upon your shoulders that threatens to crush you entirely.” Avers gives a momentary breath. “But that debt...that’s only physical. No, the debt I speak of is much more…open-ended. Metaphysical. Spiritual, in a way.

You see, every action we take in a day has an effect, a ripple through the world that we live in. Every glance we throw, or choose not to, every person we help across the street, or leave hanging, every fist we hold back, or send screaming into the skull of another, they all have an impact. They all have a ripple through the fields of fate, the wings of a butterfly causing incidences that we can barely even begin to understand the ramifications of. Those ramifications stay with us, live on in every particle of stardust that composes our flesh and bone, live on in the blood that shoots through every one of our organs, that keeps us going… and we carry the weight of those choices forevermore. The sins that we commit bog us down, slow our feet before the heavenly doors that we seek to transition to a greater plane, keep us still before our forthcoming destiny. Heartbreaking, isn’t it? A speech [i]like that makes you want to turn your life around now, makes you want to start feeding the pour, turn your riches to rags before you find yourself eaten alive by the hungry hordes, by people that I used to be like.

Not everyone feels like that, though.”

Avers lets his fists hang, and he hangs his head.

“There are some who walk among us who are content to pillage and ravage the whole fucking world for their own gain. Who fill their pockets and accounts with more money than a single person could ever spend in a thousand lifetimes, let alone one. Men who drink themselves stupid and take their misguided rage out on weaker beings, women who use their bodies to seduce others and run them dry. Sin runs deep not just in our culture, not just in our society, but deep in the synapses of our brain, a disgusting desire cemented by the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden so many years ago. For many, it’s a simple casualty, a consequence for a thousand different actions that many believe they will never have to face. This careless behavior makes me sick, turns knots in my stomach and makes me remember what I used to be, makes me regret actions years old when I see others head down the same path. My employers, well...they agree, to a point. That’s what Jane tells me, at least.”

Avers glances up to the camera once again, a wicked grin on his face. Mismatched and discolored teeth dot his smile, like stains on white linoleum tile.

“From the outside looking in, this business is rotting. Full of tumors pulsing just beneath the pale, infections raging rampant and threatening to burst beneath the skin, sacs of putrid rot pissing green and yellow, no regard for the damaged caused to years of tradition that, while rotten, gave a system of checks and balances that kept us all from careening downhill. As a young boy, every time I put my gear on, I remembered the wrestling I’d watched as a child, and even though my expertise laid in a more amatuer field, what I’d seen had always stuck with me. Now, it drives nails into my stomach, turns my organs into knots, causes bile to rise in my throat. Now, I realize that we need an excision, we need a cure. Some of you may disagree, may feel that we’re fine where we’re at, but I promise you that we’re on a sinking ship, and no matter how fortunate you may be now...your fortunes will run dry soon.”

Avers cracks his knuckles once again, and we see the tattered flesh on his fingers shift as he does so. He taps his fingers into the arm of his chair, and presses his hand into his chin as he continues speaking.

“All of my competitors on September 11th have accolades, they have weight, they have drive...but their mission is not as pure as mine. Alex Kincaid carries his prior gold on his back, he carries his reputation, his drive to be something from the name he’s built and his desire to escape the flash and pageantry of this sport, but I don’t give a shit about what he’s done before he arrived here. As far as I’m concerned a man like Kincaid who’s considered just as much a rookie as myself in Project Honor will be looking down the same barrel of the gun I am. You may place a mark upon your own back, Alex, by flaunting accomplishments and veterancy, but your pride will bog you down, and your feet will be stayed before you move into infamy, be it through your own cultivated skill or by a crushed skull at my hand.

Ragna Bramovich has...size. He has the fear factor, intimidation, as much a drive to succeed as the rest of us with a biological leg up. But...he has rage. Uncontrolled, unconsolable, unquenchable fury and anger. Bare knuckle brawls and being banged up and sent to a cage will do that to you-believe me, I know from experience how things look on the other side of those walls, but Ragna’s not seeming to have learned. Sins of wrath will bog your legs down forever, and the wrath you generate from your slowness will only seek to chain you down even deeper. From my time, I did, and I know that no matter how badass or big and burly you are, the world won’t give a modicum of a fuck about you if you’re rotting to death in a cage of steel and concrete. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Ragna’s acceptance of his new place in Project: Honor will keep him from stumbling back into his own ways, will keep him from falling back into the cell blocks of old...but I doubt it. Many don’t. Bloody me, brutalize me, Ragna, but I’ll always have my freedom, and you can’t quite promise that for yourself, can you?

And finally…Adrian Hil. One of the best in the world despite your youth, despite your upbringing, despite all odds, you imply that you are the best technical wrestler on the planet?” Avers chuckles. “Vanity is a potent sin, Adrian. It’s one that might not appear so damaging on the outside, but I promise you, eventually it will rot you whole from the inside out. Like a ripe fruit, one day, so vain and contrived, someone will bring their foot crashing down on you, and all the decay resting inside will come spilling out. Shameful, but it is what it is. Consider your paths forward-end your vanity now and fall before me, or let yourself be consumed whole.”

Avers lets his words simmer for a moment, before speaking again.

“I’m not without my own sins. Once, I bogged myself down and nearly ruined my life before it’d even begun. But...I know how to work forward. I know the debt I owe this society...and I’ll pay it off by cutting every motherfucker who believes themselves above morality off at the knees before I stomp their skull into their throat.” Avers glances up to the camera. “Don’t believe me?”

He laughs out loud, for once, a raise above his usual chuckle.

“Then come fucking test me.”

We see Avers lean back in his chair, crossing his hands one more time as we slowly fade out from the scene.