Years ago at the abandoned Michigan State Sanitarium that has been abandoned for decades, a sixteen-year-old Gabriel Tuck and his clowns go through room by room. It was rumored that a man prowled these grounds and challenged anyone who came through there to a fight. Gabriel holds a flashlight in one hand and his heavy revolver in another. He smiles as he goes down a hallway, peering into each room once inhabited by lunatics.
“Come on, Blake Luthor.”, he shouted. “Come get your licks so we can clear this place for Esmeralda von Krauss. She is waiting outside to give the all clear for her husband to bring their carnival here!”
A couple of the horrific black leather-wearing clowns go into a room. There is suddenly commotion in the room, and Gabriel watches with his flashlight shining on the doorway as two clowns come flying through the door to land in a heap.
“Oh shit!”, he breathes. “Time to make some money.”
Gabriel goes into the room, leading with the gun and flashlight. The gun is promptly knocked from his hand, and Gabriel brings up the flashlight to deflect a punch to the head. A beefy blonde man who’s full of muscles stands in the room.
“Blake Luthor?”, Gabriel asks, knowing the answer and aware of where his gun is on the floor.
“Take a guess.” The blonde man says simply, taking another swing at Gabriel’s head. Gabriel gets back in time, dodging the punch and swinging the flashlight at Blake in exchange. Blake gets up a forearm to block the flashlight from striking anything vital. He grabs it from Gabriel and throws it against the wall where it shatters. He grabs Gabriel by the shoulder and punches him several times in the midsection, and throws Gabriel down to the floor.
“Have you come to fight me, lad?” Blake asks with his voice dripping with arrogance. “You don’t look old enough to be away from yer momma’s tit.”
Several more clowns pile into the room while Gabriel struggles to sit up and spit blood onto the floor. “I don’t fight fair.”, he growls. “Get him, boys!”
The four clowns attack Blake Luthor, but he keeps them at a distance from him until he steps in for each one and hits them with a hard right hand strong enough to drop each of them with one punch. He laughs as Gabriel gets up and is joined by the last of his clowns.
“You set ‘em up, lad.”, Blake laughs. “I’ll knock ‘em down.”
Blake sweeps through the last of the clowns to get to Gabriel, whom has the gun back in hand with a smug expression.
“See?” he says with a certain smugness. “I don’t fight fair.”
Gabriel takes aim at Blake and prepares to shoot when Blake charges full steam ahead and knocks the gun from Gabriel’s hand again. A hard right hand knocks Gabriel back to the wall. Before he can recover, Blake is on him with lefts and rights to the face and chest before backing up a step so the bloodied, semiconscious Gabriel can slide down the wall into a seated position.
“I fight better.” Blake sternly intones as he grabs the front of Gabriel’s shirt with his left hand and pulls him up into a standing positon and cocks back his right hand. “I don’t know who you are, but you and your little clowns are going to die tonight.”
Gabriel breathes hard, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth. “Fuck you.”
Blake Luthor just chuckles and moves to strike the fatal blow when an upholstery needle strikes him in the right shoulder so deeply that the point sticks out from the back of his shoulder blade. He drops Gabriel and reaches to his chest where he struggles to pull the needle out through bone and flesh. He shouts in anger. “What the fuck?”
“Now, dahling. You must know that kind of language is impolite in front of a lady.”
Blake looks to see Esmeralda von Krauss, in a stunning black and red dress, walk into the room. She smiles when she looks at Blake.
“Dahling. You should consider joining our little carnival instead of sitting here all alone.”, she practically purrs. “You have done so well for yourself. You and your hands that are like hammers.”
Blake lets out a roar of pain as he rips the upholstery needle from his shoulder and looks at it for a moment before he throws it to the ground. “You are interfering in a fight, bitch.”, he snarls. “I would suggest that you go outside and wait your turn. Maybe take off your panties for when it’s your turn to get done up.”
“What?”, Esmeralda begins. “Are you afraid that you might get beaten by a woman?”
Blake sighs and gets back into a fighting stance, even as blood streams from the hole in his shoulder. “Well, when you have broken bones. I did try to warn you.”
Blake takes a swing at Esmeralda that she easily side steps and brings up a knee to Blake’s midsection to double him over. She steps back and kicks him directly in the face to send his blood splattering across the dusty floor. Blake tries to come back with an uppercut that Esmeralda easily deflects and hits a knuckle punch to the throat that sends Blake backpedaling.
“You think you can hurt my people without consequences?”
“You think that a lowlife thug like you can beat me?” Blake comes back at Esmeralda, angry now as he takes swing after swing at her to try to take her down with his pummelling fists. Esmeralda dodges or deflects each blow with practiced ease.
“Are you even trying, dahling?”
“Hold still so I can kill you, bitch!” Blake growls.
Blake puts his all into his next punch that Esmeralda sidesteps and Blake punches the metal doorway with all of his might. His eyes nearly bulge out of his head as his hand shatters. He strikes at her with his good hand, but she catches his hand an inch from her face. She sneers at him as she squeezes his hand, feeling the bones in his hand give way. He falls down to his knees, shouting in pain.
Esmeralda releases his hand and looks down at him with a grim smile. “You want to continue this fight to the death or do you yield?”
Blake lets out a ragged sigh and looks up at Esmeralda and Gabriel, who has his gun back in hand and is pointing it at Blake’s head. He looks down at the ground.
“Kill me. I am no use to anyone without my hands.”
Esmeralda laughs lightly. “Oh, dahling. I have a man that can repair your hands. Join us and you can fight many challenges on my behalf. When you are ready, you may fight me again.”
A few of the clowns are waking up and watching the scene go down. They giggle uncertainly in the space between choices.
“You have me then.” Blake Luthor admits. “I shall work for you until the end of my days.”
“Go with the clowns.” Esmeralda instructs. “I need to speak to Gabriel for a bit.”
The clowns all get up and lead Blake Luthor out of the building. Gabriel sniffs.
“You said that you wasn’t going to help me in this fight.”
Esmeralda chuckles. “Oh, dahling. I couldn’t let him kill you and I was getting bored waiting outside.”
Gabriel nods. “You really going to help fix his hands and recruit him?”
“For the fights and the wetwork.”, Esmeralda responds. “He’s going to be my killer.”
“But that doesn’t answer why you helped me?” Gabriel asks again.
“I said that I didn’t want to help you, dahling, not that I would not.”
Gabriel grins, revealing bloody teeth from a split lip. “Fine. Thank you for having my back, Mrs von Krauss.”
“”Of course, dahling.”, Esmeralda soothes. “I will always have your back.”
Gabriel nods, but doesn’t really believe the words being said to him. “And if I were to run counter to your agenda?”
Esmeralda von Krauss’ smiles, though it is starting to look strained.
“I will have your back. It is your right to choose your path for yourself.”
“And if I try to kill you?”
Now, Esmeralda’s expression darkens and indeed the whole area around her seems to become dimly lit as if the sun has refused to shine in her vicinity. “Then, I will end you myself.”
Gabriel nods again, this time stepping back from the sudden cold that the darkness brings. ”Alright, alright! I took it too far, I can admit that. Thank you for having my back.”
Esmeralda von Krauss smiles, the sun seeming to return her to the light. “Anytime. One dy though, you will have to do this alone. Your clowns and you will have to be much tougher in order to face folks like Hammerhand.”
Gabriel just smiles. “Of course. I’m just glad you were around today or I wouldn’t be able to do this.”
Gabriel swoops in for a hug and while he can’t see her expression has turned to one of shock and a little revulsion, she awkwardly pats him on the back with a small smile. “There, there, dahling. It’s just your training period for the job. Verstehen?”
Gabriel releases Esmeralda and rubs the back of his neck wth a laugh. “I’m going to go check on the guys to see how they are doing while your call Mr. von Krauss to bring the carnival in.”
Today…
Gabriel Tuck leans back in a chair at a gymnasium while Trelisa Perrault is in a ring and fighting a sparring partner. He has a beer in hand and is in wrestling gear with a sheen of sweat on him as if he has already had a turn with sparring partners.
“You got this, Lisa! Take him down!”
Gabriel shouts his encouragement while drinking the beer as Trelisa systematically takes apart sparring partner after sparring partner. A lot faster and more methodical than Gabriel’s methods at the very least, and all without cheating. Gabriel drains his beer and grabs another from the cooler next to him, much to the dissatisfaction of the other gym workers and customers who are there to try to get more fit. They glare at him, but Gabriel shrugs it off. He spots the cameraman with a laugh.
“A CWF cameraman. How am I not shocked by this?”
Gabriel works to straighten himself up, but fails miserably. “I guess that we should talk about the upcoming match then, Fiona. Miguel. Fiona, I've got nothing against you. I was once where you were, starting out in the ring, where I was normally just a hired thug. I started out in a fed where Sid owned the place, but did not actually do the day-to-day of running it. He relied on someone else to handle those things. The XCW I believe it was called.”
Gabriel pauses as if expecting something of recognition on the company by the cameraman, but when he gets nothing, he moves on. “I turned my rookie experience into a World Championship run. This is the kind of thing that you can do with the nKo at your back, babe. I was World champion for awhile there as I was the biggest fish in a small pond. Not like here where I am a small fish in a big pond. I have talents, but not your talents. You could come here and lead us to victory. Yourself with the Conquest title and then the other titles scattered throughout the nKo. Think on it! It’s not like Miguel and his little band will stand out of the way for you to grab a title.”
Gabriel just chuckles and pops open his beer so that he can drink a good amount from it. “Go, ‘Lisa! You got this!”
He takes another sip from the beer. “You know, Miguel. You’re a big man, but we have the tools to chop you down. Did you see ‘Lisa’s treatment of Frank Windsor on his last match here? She manhandled the fuck out of him! You think she won’t do the same to you? As you say, we have our knives out up front instead of concealing them.”
“I think I recall something being said about no one has been kicked from the Upstarts in a formal way. I agree. No one has been formally expelled, but a shadow ban might have taken place. You know it, Miguel, and I know it. Kelea and Ahklut Thlunaut have not seen the ring much of late have they? I’m sure you will say that this is CWF’s fault fro underutilizing an excellent tag team, but I bet that Abigail Dresden has been the one to say that their star has fallen and that they should not be booked so that they do not get more airtime than they deserve. You know it and I think you’re dating one of them? Prolly the girl, bt one can never know with you. Can we?”
“So you know, ‘Lisa and I are going to target you, Miguel. We are going to take you down, Miguel. Simply for the reason that we do not want Fiona hurting when she takes over leadership of the nKo. Like it or not, you’re going to go down. And I promise, if after the match when the two of you have been defeated and she has to walk across that ring to join us? If she takes care of you in the most violent way that she can? I have a gift that I have been authorized to give her, straight from Esmeralda von Krauss herself. I ain’t tellin’ what it is, but you can just imagine the possibilities.”
Gabriel finishes his beer as Trelisa Perrault slides out of the ring. He gets up and nods to Trelisa, who takes up the seat so that Gabriel Tuck can get into the ring and start another round.
The scene fades to black as Gabriel locks up with his first sparring partner.
