Post by Sora Weaver on Jun 27, 2021 21:10:22 GMT -5
Sora couldn't stop staring at it.
The shirt he had worn that day to Sin sat on the dresser, laid out with half hanging down.
Covered in Jin's blood.
The crimson stains dotting all over it drew Sora's eyes every time he was in the room. Each little dot a miniature time machine back to the moment he came upon his friend on the ground. Eyes closed, a river of blood coming from his skull.
Every second feeling like eternity.
Sora hears his own screams in his head, calling for help. An urgent, desperate pleading for anyone to come by and save his friend. He felt so helpless in that moment, doing the only thing he could.
Pressing his shirt against the open wound, hoping he could stop the gusher.
The same shirt that now opens up its own mental gusher, flooding Sora's mind not with blood but with so many emotions.
Fear that his friend would never been the same.
Anger at the people he knew who did this.
More fear that he wouldn't be able to avenge the actions taken.
And at the end, a steadfast belief that he had to try anyway.
He couldn't bear to throw the shirt away, put it in a closet, or just even wash it. He knew how to get blood out of clothes pretty well, he'd spilled enough blood from his deathmatch days that you learn the tricks of the trade. He couldn't bring himself to do it though. He needed that shirt to face him every day. He needed that headrush of misery to tackle him at every turn. Deep down he thought he even wanted it.
As a reminder. As motivation.
As a symbol of what he already knew.
This was so much bigger than himself.
Yet even when he took his eyes off the shirt, that day lingered in his mind. It wasn't just the attack on Jin following him around, like a specter he couldn't shake. If it was only that easy.
It was about the phone call that took him by his friend's side.
========
Before Sin, several weeks ago
They never called at this time of day.
Sora's phone buzzed away in his hand, because he didn't have the ringer on. He's not a sociopath, or an old person. As it continued to go off while he stared at the called ID, he contemplated whether to pick it up or not. He had plenty of time, that wasn't the issue. He and Jin had just arrived at the building, they had some promotional stuff to do but that wasn't for another hour at least. If he didn't do it now, he'd have to eventually...
He didn't really want to at all is the problem.
"Go on ahead Jin," Sora called out. "I need to take this. Grab me a water when you get inside, gym took it out of me today."
A "You got it" from the distance, as Jin kept walking to the building. Sighing deeply, Sora walked back to the rental car, sitting on the hood. His thumb manipulated the screen, picking up the call.
"Hey Mother."
"What took you so long to pick up the phone? You ignoring me again?"
"No, I just pulled up to work. We were heading inside when you called."
"That's not work you do. Your grandfather did work. He slaved away at a factory during the war, only for those bastards to..."
"I'm not really looking to relitigate World War 2 Mother, we've been over this before. I can't go back in time and change Pearl Harbor or anything. Just please, tell me what you want."
"Fine. Since you don't call anymore you'd have no way to know, but Yui finally broke it off with that regional manager who was cheating on her every other day. I talked to her father, he agrees the two of you would be a..."
"We're not going to be anything. How many times do I have to tell you this?"
"Yui is a fine upstanding woman, why do you continue to be so petulant about this?"
"Because you're not arranging my marriage, for the thousandth time. Yui is very nice, I enjoy spending time with her. As friends. I don't have any interest in marrying her, no matter how many times you push it on me."
"Then I insist you meet with Asahi again. She's lost a lot of weight, and she comes from a wealthy family. She's not going to be on the market much longer, and if you'd just take some initiative..."
Sora rubbed his free hand all over his face, the sign of a conversation that has been held so many times.
"Again, no. That's just not what I'm going do. You keep doing this despite me telling you no. Don't you have any respect?"
"Don't you have any respect for yourself? You're about to be thirty with no wife, no kids, and you're playing around with other men all the time. Don't you know how that makes me look? How it makes YOU look?"
Christ, this again Sora thought.
"I'm not playing around with men Mother. I'm fighting just like I always am, and just like always I fight women also. In fact I just took the world champion, A WOMAN, to a draw. I should have won, but..."
"But but but, it's always a but. You always have these excuses in everything when you don't measure up. As a fighter, as a son. It's always something, never anything. You're probably just too busy fucking skanks..."
"MOTHER CHRIST ALMIGHTY"
"To want to settle down with a good and honest woman. To want a normal life, not this degenerate bullshit that you torture me with. You're killing me you know that? No grandchildren, no daughter in law, no NOTHING!"
"This has been very uplifting. For the record no, my skank count is zero. That...I don't have any interest in that either. Not my thing."
"Well what IS your thing Sora? Because it's not making your mother happy. It's not being an honorable man. It's not making enough money to move out of that awful apartment. So what it is? What do you even do? Why are you alive?"
Sora pauses, taking a deep breath.
"Tell Father I said hi. Thanks for calling Mother."
Sora ends the call before the next venomous barb can escape the tiny futuristic rectangle in his palm. Dropping his head back so he'd be staring at the sky if his eyes weren't closed, Sora feels a wave of exhausting and anxiety wash over him.
Every call the last three years had been the same. Before at least Mother pretended to care. As age wore on for both of them, it was less about him and more about her. Less about what he was doing, more about what he wasn't.
Standing up off the car, Sora restarted his walk to the arena with his thoughts still occupied by the call. Swimming in the idea that no matter how many times he told her no, she steam rolled over him. That she didn't understand what he wanted.
Though, Sora thought to himself, how can she understand when even I don't fully under...
"OH MY GOD JIN"
========
This is all just busy work.
Every day I wait to be told that I get to avenge my friend's assault. That I can bring down as much pain and suffering on them as they did on him, on us, and yet I'm being stonewalled by what? Bureaucracy? A couple of middle management minions who are concerned about things other than the safety of their stars, who are every week exposing them to this same level of unchecked violence?
It's frustrating. No, it's infuriating.
I'm trying to do something not just for me, not just for us, but for EVERYONE and I'm being told to wait. I'm being told to stand down while there's a pack of hunters out there who will not. Who've struck once, and will strike against unless they're checked. Yet I'M the one being treated like some wild animal, that I'm the reckless one who can't be trusted.
It's a joke.
So is Nanovirus.
I'm supposed to be scared of you big man with a creepy backstory? Your imposing size, your lack of care for others is supposed to intimidate me? Because it doesn't. You're the boogeyman in the closet, the one that makes normal people scared because of the myth. Because they look at you and get afraid, because they think size and demeanor should strike fear in a man.
Not me.
See fear isn't something that just appears for me. It's more like a running current through my body, accessible at any given time. That's what life is for someone whose been tormented since he's been able to talk. Someone who decided to just be different enough that people thought he was strange, even though in the grand scheme of life I'm perfectly normal. Someone with the audacity to possess parents of different races, so when the genetic lottery gives him a mix of everything people get to ask questions like
"What are you"
"Where are you from"
"You don't look like you're from there"
Assuming they speak with their mouths and not their fists. Assuming they don't make their own judgements of you just with that one look, and use old stereotypes baked in by centuries of discrimination to make your present a horror show.
This is fear, perpetuated over a lifetime and woven into the very spirit of the tormented. Branded onto the soul, unable to be taken off only to be covered. Yet even then, you know it's there. It stares at you from its hiding place, knowing its one misstep away from emerging. Know that all it takes is one tiny thing to take its place on top of you.
That is true terror.
You're not terror Nanovirus.
You're what people who are comfortable THINK terror looks like. You're a construction of falsehoods, made by people who can't grasp real fear. Who can't possibly understand what every single day feels like living this way.
Who just don't get it.
That doesn't mean you won't be a challenge. You are big, and I am not. You are strong, and I am not. You have your advantages, but ultimately those are physical and not psychological. You aren't different from any other big and strong wrestler I've faced before. I didn't sign up for an equality fight, I signed up to wrestle anyone put in front of me.
Even if its not the ones I WANT in front of me, NEED in front of me.
A deal is a deal, no matter how baffling it continues to be.
No matter how I need to do it I will beat you Nanovirus. I'll slay this giant just like I have plenty of others. You're just a man, no matter how big. It matters not to me. Beating you gets me one step closer to what I need to be doing. It clears you out of my path so I can keep going where I need to.
And to get there? I'll beat ten of you at once. I'll stare down whatever challenge required. I don't have a choice, because I NEED to get to that destination. I NEED my hands on the people who tried to end my friend's life. Who did their best to ruin his life, and in turn all of ours who cared about him.
You think you can stop that Nanovirus? You can't. You won't.
This ends one way. With you on the canvas staring at the lights, and me staring forward at what I want next.
What I need next.
The shirt he had worn that day to Sin sat on the dresser, laid out with half hanging down.
Covered in Jin's blood.
The crimson stains dotting all over it drew Sora's eyes every time he was in the room. Each little dot a miniature time machine back to the moment he came upon his friend on the ground. Eyes closed, a river of blood coming from his skull.
Every second feeling like eternity.
Sora hears his own screams in his head, calling for help. An urgent, desperate pleading for anyone to come by and save his friend. He felt so helpless in that moment, doing the only thing he could.
Pressing his shirt against the open wound, hoping he could stop the gusher.
The same shirt that now opens up its own mental gusher, flooding Sora's mind not with blood but with so many emotions.
Fear that his friend would never been the same.
Anger at the people he knew who did this.
More fear that he wouldn't be able to avenge the actions taken.
And at the end, a steadfast belief that he had to try anyway.
He couldn't bear to throw the shirt away, put it in a closet, or just even wash it. He knew how to get blood out of clothes pretty well, he'd spilled enough blood from his deathmatch days that you learn the tricks of the trade. He couldn't bring himself to do it though. He needed that shirt to face him every day. He needed that headrush of misery to tackle him at every turn. Deep down he thought he even wanted it.
As a reminder. As motivation.
As a symbol of what he already knew.
This was so much bigger than himself.
Yet even when he took his eyes off the shirt, that day lingered in his mind. It wasn't just the attack on Jin following him around, like a specter he couldn't shake. If it was only that easy.
It was about the phone call that took him by his friend's side.
========
Before Sin, several weeks ago
They never called at this time of day.
Sora's phone buzzed away in his hand, because he didn't have the ringer on. He's not a sociopath, or an old person. As it continued to go off while he stared at the called ID, he contemplated whether to pick it up or not. He had plenty of time, that wasn't the issue. He and Jin had just arrived at the building, they had some promotional stuff to do but that wasn't for another hour at least. If he didn't do it now, he'd have to eventually...
He didn't really want to at all is the problem.
"Go on ahead Jin," Sora called out. "I need to take this. Grab me a water when you get inside, gym took it out of me today."
A "You got it" from the distance, as Jin kept walking to the building. Sighing deeply, Sora walked back to the rental car, sitting on the hood. His thumb manipulated the screen, picking up the call.
"Hey Mother."
"What took you so long to pick up the phone? You ignoring me again?"
"No, I just pulled up to work. We were heading inside when you called."
"That's not work you do. Your grandfather did work. He slaved away at a factory during the war, only for those bastards to..."
"I'm not really looking to relitigate World War 2 Mother, we've been over this before. I can't go back in time and change Pearl Harbor or anything. Just please, tell me what you want."
"Fine. Since you don't call anymore you'd have no way to know, but Yui finally broke it off with that regional manager who was cheating on her every other day. I talked to her father, he agrees the two of you would be a..."
"We're not going to be anything. How many times do I have to tell you this?"
"Yui is a fine upstanding woman, why do you continue to be so petulant about this?"
"Because you're not arranging my marriage, for the thousandth time. Yui is very nice, I enjoy spending time with her. As friends. I don't have any interest in marrying her, no matter how many times you push it on me."
"Then I insist you meet with Asahi again. She's lost a lot of weight, and she comes from a wealthy family. She's not going to be on the market much longer, and if you'd just take some initiative..."
Sora rubbed his free hand all over his face, the sign of a conversation that has been held so many times.
"Again, no. That's just not what I'm going do. You keep doing this despite me telling you no. Don't you have any respect?"
"Don't you have any respect for yourself? You're about to be thirty with no wife, no kids, and you're playing around with other men all the time. Don't you know how that makes me look? How it makes YOU look?"
Christ, this again Sora thought.
"I'm not playing around with men Mother. I'm fighting just like I always am, and just like always I fight women also. In fact I just took the world champion, A WOMAN, to a draw. I should have won, but..."
"But but but, it's always a but. You always have these excuses in everything when you don't measure up. As a fighter, as a son. It's always something, never anything. You're probably just too busy fucking skanks..."
"MOTHER CHRIST ALMIGHTY"
"To want to settle down with a good and honest woman. To want a normal life, not this degenerate bullshit that you torture me with. You're killing me you know that? No grandchildren, no daughter in law, no NOTHING!"
"This has been very uplifting. For the record no, my skank count is zero. That...I don't have any interest in that either. Not my thing."
"Well what IS your thing Sora? Because it's not making your mother happy. It's not being an honorable man. It's not making enough money to move out of that awful apartment. So what it is? What do you even do? Why are you alive?"
Sora pauses, taking a deep breath.
"Tell Father I said hi. Thanks for calling Mother."
Sora ends the call before the next venomous barb can escape the tiny futuristic rectangle in his palm. Dropping his head back so he'd be staring at the sky if his eyes weren't closed, Sora feels a wave of exhausting and anxiety wash over him.
Every call the last three years had been the same. Before at least Mother pretended to care. As age wore on for both of them, it was less about him and more about her. Less about what he was doing, more about what he wasn't.
Standing up off the car, Sora restarted his walk to the arena with his thoughts still occupied by the call. Swimming in the idea that no matter how many times he told her no, she steam rolled over him. That she didn't understand what he wanted.
Though, Sora thought to himself, how can she understand when even I don't fully under...
"OH MY GOD JIN"
========
This is all just busy work.
Every day I wait to be told that I get to avenge my friend's assault. That I can bring down as much pain and suffering on them as they did on him, on us, and yet I'm being stonewalled by what? Bureaucracy? A couple of middle management minions who are concerned about things other than the safety of their stars, who are every week exposing them to this same level of unchecked violence?
It's frustrating. No, it's infuriating.
I'm trying to do something not just for me, not just for us, but for EVERYONE and I'm being told to wait. I'm being told to stand down while there's a pack of hunters out there who will not. Who've struck once, and will strike against unless they're checked. Yet I'M the one being treated like some wild animal, that I'm the reckless one who can't be trusted.
It's a joke.
So is Nanovirus.
I'm supposed to be scared of you big man with a creepy backstory? Your imposing size, your lack of care for others is supposed to intimidate me? Because it doesn't. You're the boogeyman in the closet, the one that makes normal people scared because of the myth. Because they look at you and get afraid, because they think size and demeanor should strike fear in a man.
Not me.
See fear isn't something that just appears for me. It's more like a running current through my body, accessible at any given time. That's what life is for someone whose been tormented since he's been able to talk. Someone who decided to just be different enough that people thought he was strange, even though in the grand scheme of life I'm perfectly normal. Someone with the audacity to possess parents of different races, so when the genetic lottery gives him a mix of everything people get to ask questions like
"What are you"
"Where are you from"
"You don't look like you're from there"
Assuming they speak with their mouths and not their fists. Assuming they don't make their own judgements of you just with that one look, and use old stereotypes baked in by centuries of discrimination to make your present a horror show.
This is fear, perpetuated over a lifetime and woven into the very spirit of the tormented. Branded onto the soul, unable to be taken off only to be covered. Yet even then, you know it's there. It stares at you from its hiding place, knowing its one misstep away from emerging. Know that all it takes is one tiny thing to take its place on top of you.
That is true terror.
You're not terror Nanovirus.
You're what people who are comfortable THINK terror looks like. You're a construction of falsehoods, made by people who can't grasp real fear. Who can't possibly understand what every single day feels like living this way.
Who just don't get it.
That doesn't mean you won't be a challenge. You are big, and I am not. You are strong, and I am not. You have your advantages, but ultimately those are physical and not psychological. You aren't different from any other big and strong wrestler I've faced before. I didn't sign up for an equality fight, I signed up to wrestle anyone put in front of me.
Even if its not the ones I WANT in front of me, NEED in front of me.
A deal is a deal, no matter how baffling it continues to be.
No matter how I need to do it I will beat you Nanovirus. I'll slay this giant just like I have plenty of others. You're just a man, no matter how big. It matters not to me. Beating you gets me one step closer to what I need to be doing. It clears you out of my path so I can keep going where I need to.
And to get there? I'll beat ten of you at once. I'll stare down whatever challenge required. I don't have a choice, because I NEED to get to that destination. I NEED my hands on the people who tried to end my friend's life. Who did their best to ruin his life, and in turn all of ours who cared about him.
You think you can stop that Nanovirus? You can't. You won't.
This ends one way. With you on the canvas staring at the lights, and me staring forward at what I want next.
What I need next.