This Confession Has Meant Nothing

[The Honeless Beard]

Before the gore spattered against a camera, Ivan was recoiling, a hand covering his forehead, the word fuck exiting his lips, his body riddled with shards of white.

[Applesintime]

It had been a good idea to get behind the pillar, he decided. Yeah, he’d still need to take a shower, but at least he didn’t have fucking exploding Fisk all over him. How did someone blow up so… loudly?

[carduinal-cyn]

The room filled with the smell of vomit, blood, and raw meat.

Olivia stumbled to the edge of the boat and retched.

[ItzToxie]

There was the feint hissing of a water hose still going. Not like anyone could hear it over the tinnitus pulsing through their ear drums. The cameras heard it, but all the ones close enough to see were covered in a clear-red-brown fluid coating the lenses. In the epicenter of the blast remained Fisk Bateman, the leader of The Respects, murderer of six, directly, and upwards of eleven indirectly, a tattered mess of torn cloth, meat, and bone. Nothing beyond that remained of the wannabe firebrand, none of the dignity, poise, or most notably, his arrogance.

In front of millions of viewers, the supposed renegade mastermind behind a gang of friends using a tv show as an excuse to indulge in their vices, the self-proclaimed Caligula of pay-per-view lied nearly unmoving, dead and exposed for all to see. Some would see it an ironic fate, Fisk Bateman wanted to be the first individual to win SOTF by bending the rules to his own means, and instead ended up as SOTF-TV's first human water balloon, followed by SOTF-TV's first human water fountain, as the spouts of water bouncing off his exposed broken ribs could attest. Smaller fountains pouring through his nostrils and the tear in his cheek formed from between his scars.

Some might call it a form of modern art.

Though if you considered this shit art...


Well you may be the definition of an American Psycho.


Fisk's Respects 01: Fisk Bateman: DECEASED

[The Honeless Beard]

Staggering to another camera, Ivan slowly peeled his hand back, a flap of skin coming with it. He slowly lowered his palm to look down upon it, a thick, leathery feeling permeating his hand.

He was staring at a piece of red flesh, and when he let it slip away from his bloody palm, it flapped on the other side - staring back at him, a carved, bruised, scabbed and scraped F.

He touched his forehead, and felt a thin layer of membrane and bone, looking up at a blinking red light of a camera, it capturing Ivan's shock and horror, the removal of a physical piece of his resistance.

There wasn't time for pain. Not when his ribcage was dotted with the pieces of Fisk's. Not when he couldn't stop spitting red wads of saliva from his mouth, feeling his jeans sticking to him from being soaked by something that - finally - wasn't salt water.

"Shoot Anthony," Ivan said, but his voice came out a croak as he sagged backwards, hands grabbing at the hose and hauling it towards himself, scrabbling for his only weapon left now that Tenga had left him.

"Shoot," he tried again, weakly, the hose tugging out of Fisk's mouth, skittering along the floor. They had to kill Anthony. They had to do it now.

[ItzToxie]

The cadaver was dragged for all of a foot by Ivan before Fisk slid off the hose with a *shuk* noise.

[Applesintime]

Shoot Anthony. He'd be lying if he said he hadn't been expecting this, and he didn't even have his gun because the motherfucking piece of shit jammed on him or whatever the fuck happened to it. Give him the chance, and he'd put a bullet in Olivia and then empty the gun into Ivan and take his head off with the axe, just to be fucking sure. But Anthony didn't have a gun, and he didn't fancy going up against the shotgun. He'd seen a few people who'd been killed by Seo-yun's shotgun, and it was messy.

Instead, while Olivia was distracted throwing up over the edge of the ship and Ivan was what, pulling Fisk over to him so he could do more vaguely flirty shit with his corpse or something, Anthony made a run for it. He could work around and grab his rifle, and then take a fucking shower or something. FIghting Ivan with a rifle prone to jamming or whatever was happening to it seemed like a poor prospect.

These corridors went on and on. Plenty of time to set an ambush or come up from behind and put a bullet in their backs. And there were still three more people on the list he could deal with first.

"GO FUCK FISK INSTEAD!"

((Anthony Golden continued in Invictus))

[carduinal-cyn]

"Uggh..."

Olivia's head reeled from the stench. People were telling her to shoot, go and fuck Fisk, like that was possible — you're a sick man, Anthony. Then it all fell silent, and she was alone with Tenga and a freshly exploded corpse.

She wasn't sure whether it had been three minutes or three months. She couldn't stop staring. The mass of blood and guts and all that other icky stuff by her feet was Fisk fucking Bateman. She hated him — he'd made that easy — but the carnage before her was... good for ratings, if nothing else. (She'd almost forgotten where she was.)

In this last quiet moment to herself, Olivia wished she could muster anything: a tear, a wistful memory, even a snappy comment for the audience watching back at home. She clung to Tenga like an old friend. Tenga didn't know her performance before this was a big fat zero. Tenga didn't know Lucia and Vasily and RJ were all dead and gone. Tenga didn't even know there was an eye-searing trainwreck of a body lying there on the edge. The two of them stood together in solidarity: the defender and her stick.

A grim look crossed Liv's face as she left the scene of the atrocity behind. Her thoughts were clear and silent — no phantom coaches or illusory birds to distract her now. The six remaining players of the bitterest match in America had taken their places.

Fate blew the whistle.

(Olivia del Rio will be back after these messages...)