- Event: Refueled XLI
Scene 1: Mercenary
Solex pushes the Earth down – or pushes himself up, depending on who you ask – in perfect cadence as he knocks out push up after push up. His stares forward at the wall as a few beads of sweat begin to develop on his forehead. Aside from the occasional blink of the eyes, the only movement on his face is his lips as he whispers the count to himself. The sound of metal clanging is almost hypnotic as his dog tags strike the concrete floor in perfect rhythm. The beads of sweat grow rapidly, and fall down his brow and land on the concrete floor. A small puddle begins to form over the course of a few dozen pushups, before Solex abruptly springs up to his feet. He pulls off his black tank top and throws at across the room where it lands softly on an old dilapidated couch that’s been pushed up against the cinderblock wall.
“Ahhhhh!” Solex groans as he leans backward looking up at the ceiling as he lets his arms fall outward to his sides, stretching his chest out.
This isn’t some pretentious Brian Hollywood mansion. This isn’t some fancy bullshit hotel suite, or some dumb ass black car with windows tinted to total blackness. You won’t find some douchebag wearing black shades with his long platinum hair slicked back in a place like this. This is wear a hardened man lives. Where a hero, a war veteran, and a stone cold killer lives. This is where Steve Solex lives. This is his house. And this is the cold, damp and decrepit basement that Steve Solex secludes himself to when his head just isn’t right. This…this is his fortress of fucking solitude.
He paces the room, catching his breath. I’m pretty sure he just did like a thousand pushups, so shut the fuck about the heavy breathing, you pussy. Anyway, like I was saying. Solex paces the room. The sound of a cell phone ringing comes from above, catching his attention. He walks across the cold basement floor and heads to old wooden steps that lead to the home upstairs. The steps barely hold Solex’s weight as he climbs them with a slow jog.
At the top of the stairs is an end-table, and on that end-table is a buzzing and ringing cell phone, that Solex quickly snatches and puts to his year.
“Yeah…” Solex says in an annoyed tone. Not the most pleasant way to answer your phone, but Steve Solex isn’t a very pleasant individual. Don’t act like you’re fucking new around here, Solex is an absolute prick and we all know it.
“Look, man. I told you, I’m done with this shit!”
He slams his flip phone – yeah, motherfucker…a flip phone – shut and hurls it. It shatters into a million pieces and Solex can do nothing but shake his head.
Solex whips around one-hundred and eighty degrees as the family ring of an iPhone begins to blare from the kitchen table. Solex slowly approaches the table, and reaches underneath it. There he finds an iPhone taped to the bottom of the table. He rips the tape, and pulls the phone out. He sees the number on the screen, and begrudgingly he presses green answer button.
“Look, asshole…”
But he’s cutoff. “Under the table, you will also find a contract.”
He reaches back underneath the table, and pulls out a piece of paper.
“Two-hundred thousand? Are you fucking serious?”
I can’t stress this enough. Steve Solex is not a fucking hitman or a so-called assassin. He USED to do missions for people, he doesn’t kill for hire….but sometimes….that’s part of the job. But he hasn’t been about that life in a number of years, and two-hundred thousand definitely isn’t enough to change his mind.
“None of this shit means a fucking thing to me,” Solex affirms, as he balls up what’s tantamount to his livelihood and tosses it in the waste bin to his left. “I told you once, and I guess I’m telling you again. Lose my fuckin’ number.”
The voice on the other end of the phone doesn’t respond, and Solex’s eyes widen as a firm knock at the front door grabs his attention. He slowly pulls the microphone of the phone away from his mouth, as his heart rate kicks into high gear. He slowly toward the door, carefully selecting which plank of wood each step lands on, attempting to remain as silent as possible. Two feet from the door, and the old war-vet jumps nearly ten feet in the air as the person on the other side of the door knocks again; this time twice as hard as before. He reaches toward his back and pulls a hand gun – It’s a SIG Sauer P320, if you’re curious – and holds it down by his side, his finger clear of the trigger…he’s trained you ass-bag and he knows what the fuck he’s doing. So quit being such a sensitive bitch, and stay with me here.
“Who is it?!” He shouts, half way hoping to intimidate whoever it may be.
Solex has dropped the phone to the ground and is now gripping the pistol with both hands as he attempts to posture himself so that he might be able to catch a glimpse of the person on the other side of the door through the peep hole. A silhouette would work…anything really.
“Shit.” Solex mutters to himself as he notices that whoever is on the other side of the door was smart enough to cover the peep hole. Slowly, Solex kneels down and grabs the phone. He puts it back to his ear.
“Do we have your attention now?” The scraggly voice on the other end of the phone delivers a veiled threat in a calm, yet devilish tone. “We can be wherever we feel like, anytime we feel like it. You’re not out of the game, until we say you’re out of the game. Is that understood?”
Solex cocks an eyebrow high, definitely asking “Are you fucking serious?” without saying a damn thing.
“Look, fuck stick. I’m tired of your shit and I’m all out of fucks to give,” and with that he drops the iPhone onto the ground and crushes it below his boot heel. He twists for good measure as he lets out a grunt.
Scene 2: Say Goodbye to Hollywood, Part 2
We’ve already done this shit. Best I can remember; we’ve done this shit three times over the past 12 months. That’s a year, Brian…you dipshit. Unfortunately for me, I’ve been on the losing end of two of those contests. But let’s just say, I was a different man back then. While I was ranked number one at one point and time this year, I noticed a sharp decline in my performance and that’s when I knew shit had to change. The pairing with Bergman was only supposed to be temporary at best, but all of you bitch-fucks just had to cheer us on, didn’t you? Well, all that shit’s changed, Brian.
You’ve now gotten yourself into a pretty precarious situation here. You’ve gotten yourself into a match with…not just, Steve Solex, but the very best version of Steve Solex. And while you might think that you’re some kind of midnight fuckin’ assassin, or that your some kind of dick-nipped version of Matthew Bourne, you’re just not. Let me make this perfectly clear: You’re not an assassin. You’re not a bad ass. You’re a sad pathetic excuse for a human being, and at Refueled you’re going to find out exactly how bad life can get. I can guaran-fuckin-tee that the only thing that you’ve killed in your pathetic life has probably been the ant under your boot. You don’t have the eyes of a killer Brian. Look at my eyes? See the hardness, the emptiness, and the general feeling that it sends down your spine when you look into them? That’s what the eyes of a fucking killer look like, Brian.
I know, I know…Brian. You’re a tag team champion! I get it. But let me be perfectly fucking clear. You and Darin Zion are the biggest pair of frauds that HOW has ever seen. The two of you are easily the worst tag team this or any generation of HOW has ever been forced to stomach. The fact that the two of you somehow managed to capture a championship makes me cringe harder than I do when watching a Brian Hollywood and Darin Zion match. The fact that you two will possibly lead the tag team division to ICONIC makes me sick to my fucking stomach. But, don’t worry. I’m sure I know a couple of guys who will gladly, and easily – I might add, take those titles off your hands.
But for now, Brian. You’ve got to deal with me, a real life War Machine…but I don’t need the iron suit, I just kill.