BRO, THIS TITLE IS SO CIRCUS, IT'S INTENSE!

…Once upon Alcatraz, long ago...

He stares at the blooded face of Mike Best, his brother.

Mike’s eye inches away from a jagged piece of metal jutting out of a rusted IV stand.

Kael’s hands are pushing Mike’s face closer and closer to his death.Max can’t remember how he got here.

His body shakes with agony.The skin that covers his body is a map of wounds.

Blood runs slick over his hand̶̥̒̆́̂s and face. He can’t tell if it’s his or his brothers.

Where was Cecilworth? How had he let it get this bad?

Weren’t they all brothers?

Michael is staring at him with regret and sadness in his eyes. The Minister’s control was broken. Max could already feel it attempting to assert dominance.

“Sorry.”

He doesn’t know why he says i̸͓͒͝t. Maybe to give some comfort to his brother before he does what he has to do. Maybe it was because Max felt remorse for what had transpired between him and his brother. Sorry that their paths had led them to this situation.

Max offers one last smile. He doesn’t feel like smiling but it’s the last comfort he can offe̶̡͔͚̱̊̑̕r Mike.

He can feel the Minister's fingers creeping up from the shadows of his mind.

Rage floods his brain as his darker personality wrestles back control of their body. The smile melts into a hateful sneer.

He feels himself slipping back into the shadows of his mind, like falling into a pool of cold, dark water. Unexpectedly pain explodes through his head.

The metal IV rod he tried to kill his brother explodes through his mechanical eye. Following is a wet crunching noise as the metal object penetrates the thin bone in his eye socket. From there it sinks itself into the soft tissue of his brain.

Max’s world ends with the dying giggles of the Minister.

..

..max…

…….Max…

….MAX…

The Lord of Kaelsalvania stirs from the darkness by the calling of his name.

“Welcome back buddy.”

Blinking away the shadows Max peers up into a bright, yellow light.

“Oh shit.. There really is a bright light..” Max whispers. He narrows his eyes as he tries to focus on the golden light sparkling in front of him.

“Sorta. You lucked out that I was the one to find you.”

The voice sounded familiar but Max couldn’t quite place it. He focuses on the light as it’s golden brilliance slowly focuses to a single point of light.

A single glowing yellow eye.

“..Shell?.. “

“‘Fraid so, buddy.”

Wearing a Hawaiian shirt while sṕ̵̫̜̬̫͜orting his yokulele was Max Shell in all his glory. He reaches down and helps Max up to his feet.

“So… this is it?” Max inquires as he stares around at the desolate rocky landscape. The sky was a mix of bright blues and glimmering purples that danced through the sky like a reflection of water.

“Sometimes. Hard to explain. When the Minister took over he threw us all out into the void. A few of us managed to find each other wandering the wastes. Did he manage to kill you off as well?” Shell asks, strumming his yokulele as he did so.

“I think..” Mà̴̩̒́x begins before memories of his last few moments with the IV return to him. Instinctively Max reached for his eye. He was expecting a gaping wound or, at least, his cold, mechanical eye. Instead he found a fleshy vision orb.

His eye had been restored.

“..I think Mike killed both of us.”

An impressed ex̴̛͇̣̹̺̎͌͒pression swells upon Shell’s face as he strums his instrument again, this time striking a more hopeful cord.

“He's dead? That's great! That would also explain why you are here now. Which also means that the Minster might be around here as well.” the joyful look on Shell’s face darkens as he considers that the Minister could be nearby. “We better get back to the others in case he’s poking around. I don’t know if we can die here but I don’t want to tempt fate.”

He holsters his yokulele and motions for Max to follow.

“Let’s get going, it’s a few hours walk.”

-

“Barbed̷̰̂ wire ropes?”

Max looks less than enthusiastic as he peers down at the alert on his phone. He mulls the words over as his eyes dance over them.

“..for the Vacant Intense Title. I suppose I̸̧̥̟͗ could wrestle in the blood with the Bayou Butcher.” Looking back up from his phone, the Lord of Kaelsalvania surveys the vast green fields. They run right up the Valdvivian forests of Northern Argentina. These lands had once been part of that ancient forest before Max’s father, Wilhelm, had arrived. He wasted no time cutting his land free of the old growth.

“So you own all this?” Sutler asks his father from the driver's seat of a jeep.

“Technically my sister, Elenore Sinclair, is the custodian of all this property.” Max replies. “But this all belongs to the family, sure. I was here when I was a child.”

“Same.” the Son of Scions mutters. If Max hears Sutler he doesn’t se̶̗̍̓̚em to react to his word.

“This is my FIRST TIME!”

Both Max and Sutler turn to peer at Sub-Marquis Bentley Tennyson Farthington-Primrose who c̴̼̗̟͈̐̋̈́̒̊heerfully bobs up and down in the back seat. Unlike Max or his son who are wearing more modern hiking gear, the Hę̷̺͖̙̍̒͋͑rald is in full Victorian era Big Game Hunter regalia, complete with pith helmet.

“Good for you buddy.” Max c̴̼̜̄hips in before he turns to look back out over the forest. His memory is alive with the last time he had been here as a child. Running through the woods, his mind on fire. The installation of the Administrator and its rapì̸̘͝d decline into the Minister.

“I hate it! There are a lot of bugs.” the Herald says, swatting some kind of carnivorous insect away from his face.

“So what the fuck are we doing here? You said we were taking a quick trip down to Texas. That turned into a so called swift flight to Guyana and then a nip over to Argentina!” Sutl̶̡̹̬̠͓͈̂̐͊́͆̒er protests from his seat in the jeep.

“Well I wasn’t expecting to find the eye in Clay Byrd’s place all broken up!” Max shouts back as he turns away from the forest and his memories. “Then Don W̸̲̉̀̎͗͠͝inters hit me up asking for a favor. That took me down to Guyana. Then I remembered that Doctor Galt, the neuro-scientist who made this eye, used to work down here. Since we were down here in South America I figured we’d swing by. Better than being cooped up in Arkham with Mina.”

“You know Chloe Sektor-Kael is also there, right?” Sutler adds indignantly.

“Not anymore.” the Unquestionable one dismissively retorts as he climbs back into the jeep. “I sent her back to John Sektor.”

There is silence as Max buckles his seat belt. He casts his adopted son a casual glance only to spot Sutler's murderous expression.

“What?”

For his part Max is unaware of what he has done wrong. This leaves him unprepared as Sutler begins battering him across the face with an unhinged reign of fists.

“SHE WAS MY SISTER!” Sutler roars, tears of rage and disbelief filling his eyes. . The Herald begins to scream and flail helplessly in the back seat as Max fails to register a meaningful defense. In his desperation Max manages to unbuckle his seatbelt befo̸̡͌̆́̏̅re he spills out onto the ground.

“You gave her back to that fucking addict?!” Sutler scr̶̤͇̅̏͑̚̚͠eams as he continues to try to attack Max. He clamors over the passenger seat and leaps toward Max with hate and hurt in his eyes. Unfortunately in his enraged stat̵̰́̓e he isn’t thinking clearly. He finds a reward in the form of Max’s thick soled hiking boots right to the chin. The kick knocks his head back and beats some of the fight out of him as he crumbles backward.

“Great hit! Do it again! AGAIN!!” The Herald cheers Max on waving his arms in the air.

“Shut up!” the Unquestionable Max Kael snarls toward the Herald.

Max climbs to his feet with a grunt. Sutler remains dazed wḣ̵̟͖͕̼͍̦̋ile attempting to use the side of the jeep to pick himself up. The Lord of Kaelsalvania works off instinct. He has to end this quickly and get Sutler back under control.

In the back of his mind he figured Shane Reynolds was getting his̷̥̝̰̟͊ revenge on him through his damnable spawn, Sutler.

Grabbing his sons head Max, smashes it against the side of the jeep several times. The last smash finishes with a loud crack followed by the Son of Scions collapsing to the grou̷̡͈̾͠nd in a heap. Max stalks around his adopted son like a shark waiting for its prey to bleed out.

“She serves no purpose to the plan, Sutler!”

He shouts the words down at the unmoving body. They are words filled with both remorse and grim determination.

“Had to get rid of her. She might have gotten caught up in the crossfire, Sutler. John Sektor cleaned himself up, he’s in a better place than he’s ever been in his life. You don’t think I didn’t c̷̨̽̍heck first?”

His words are short as a stinging pain runs through his jaw. Adrenaline and surprise had numbed Max to the pain of Sutler's punches. Now that he had a moment to process the attack, he was beginning to feeling it.

“She’s a lot s̴̢̿afer where she is than where we’re about to be, my boy. I get it though. You loved her like she was your sister, you’ve been taking care of her for the last, what, four years? There was probably a better way to tell you.” the Prime Minister of Maxopotamia admits, rubbing his tender jaw with his hand.

“But then you could have handled it a lot better, Sutler.”

He notices that Sutler hasn’t replied nor moved. He nudges his son with his foot, still getting no response.

“Sutler? Sutler!” Max shouts down at his son. Panic bubbled up in his chest as he wasn’t entirely sure if he had committed filicide.

“And WINNER BY KNOCKOUT! The Great and Glorious MAXIM-”

“Shut up! Do you know how to drive?!” Max asks as he grabs Sutler up, loading him into the passenger seat of the jeep.

The Herald looks bewildered that Max would ask him to drive the jeep. Though hesitant, driving the jeep sounds exactly like something the Herald would like to try. So, with all of his Sub-Marquisness, Bentley lies.

“Yes! Of course I drive! I drive all the time! In fact I was just saying to myself the other day that I drive, probably, way too much!” the Herald ecstatically informs Max as he slips out of the back and prances to the driver's seat.

“Great, there should be a doctor’s clinic about two miles in that direction.” Max indicates a direction away from the woods over a far rolling green hill.

“Right!” the Sub-Marquis cackles as he turns the ignition bring the Jeep to life.

His eyes light up with glee.

His foot hits the gas.

Shit hits the fan.

-

Being driven by the Herald was akin to a religious experience. That is to say there are no words that I can use here to convey the terror and thrill of the trip.

Sure it was across basically an open field with one hill on it.

But this is the Herald we are talking about here.

Suffice to say what should have been a ten minute ride was shortened to about four minutes. That at the cost of about six thousand dollars in value to the jeep itself.

Still, what is important is that they reached an unusual clinic that sat on the vast stretch of land of the Kael Estate.

Unusual, of course, because there were no villages or towns nearby to service, nor any business that might employ their services. Just this well maintained and still staffed, existing out here on its own.

A little creepy.

As the jeep pulls up several confused nurses exit the clinic. Max is quick to get their attention.

“Hello, we need help! My boy, he fell and hit his head.”

The Herald wouldn’t be the only person to lie today it seemed. Was it his shame? Fear that he might be arrested? Short memory? My bet is shame.

The nurses look at each other in confusion. It’s unclear if they understand what Max is saying or if they are hesitating out of an abundance of caution. Being out in the middle of nowhere usually means that you don’t want people just randomly showing up with head trauma victims.

“My name is Maximillian Wilhelm KAEL.” Max says with particular emphasis on his last name. The nurses once again share a glance with each other, this one of skepticism.

“Max Kael is dead.”

A stern voice with a hint of a German accent calls out from behind the nurses. They part as an older, pale man with a black suit, white lab coat and a severe, hawkish face. Though his youthful face had withered with the ravages of time, Max recognizes the man immediately. The man he can come to Argentina to see in the first place.

“Doctor Galt, I presume?”

-

“You notice he looks at us when he eats?”

Purple’s voice had concern in it as she spoke in hushed tones to her aunt, Ulsa N. Couth. The old woman looks up from her desk to study the face of her niece.

“He looks at us when he eats?” Couth asks with disbelief.

“Uh, yeah.” Violent replies before pointing across the office where Maximillian Wilhelm Kael sits at a small table. He is staring at the two of them as he greedily shovels globs of MEAT? into his eager mouth. “He’s been doing this since I pulled him out of that place up in Massachusetts. It’s freaking me out.”

Max fires off a wink to both women following it with a MEAT? filled grin.

“You sure? He’s always been fucking weird.” Couth whispers as she returns her attention to the papers laying out on her desk. “Maybe we just started noticing recently.”

Another thought enters her head, one that she feels is far more likely.

“You know a dog will develop destructive behavior and odd quirks if left to their own devices without stimulation? Work dogs especially, they need to get run out more. With the PRIME break he’s gotten a little stir crazy.” the old hag muses. “The issue here is that you haven’t been pushing him hard enough, Niece.”

VP takes great offense to this as her steely eyes dart back to her withered old auntie.

“He’s been training on his own! He’s been going on runs, using the gym equipment that I had installed. He’s actually doing the work which is what has been even more unusual. It’s like..” Violent looks back up at Max who has yet to break away eye contact. In fact, outside of the wink, she doesn’t think she’s seen him blink once. “..like he’s getting ready for something.”

“Of course he is getting ready for something. He’s got an Intense Championship match to get ready for. I don’t need to tell you how important it would be for the brand if Max were to win here tonight. After our investment dropped out on Eddie Cross we’re going to need something big to pick up the slack.”

The unexpected departure of Eddie Cross had put a wrench into their plans. Months of work flushed down the toilet leaving their Investment very much in the air. PRIME management rewarding Max with an Intense Title shot was a big get. This meant Couth was keen on seeing her client win.

“No, it’s not that, I think he’s up to something." Violent lowers her voice, leaning closer to her Aunt. "You know he left with Sutler and the Herald? He only came back with the Herald. Suspicious."

“I’ve been watching that idiot for half a year now. Six whole months of pure, unrefined stupidity coming out of his word hole, spilling out all over my shoes. He’s not the problem, Violent, this is the problem.”

Once again dismissing Violent’s concerns, Ulsa snatches up several documents off her desk. Annoyed that her aunt wasn’t taking her concerns seriously, Purple snatches the documents from Couth’s talon like fingers.

At first her mind is clouded with her irritation. Instead of focusing on the papers in front of her she let her imagination and anger guide her thoughts. However the longer she flips through the documents the more her mind focuses on them. The name Kael is showing up.

“These are trademark applications for things involving Max. I don’t recognize the signature here. This isn’t either you or me.” she hisses beneath her breath.

“Whoever applied for all these names goes by the name Mina Starr-Kael.” Ulsa answers the question before VP can ask it. Purple’s eyes light up with recognition as he looks back down at the documents.

“That was the woman who kidnapped Max to Arkham. She’s connected to that fucking Herald.” U.N. Couth leans back in her chair as she debates their next move. Her beady eyes turn to settle on Max again.

“You! What do you know about Mina Starr-Kael?”

Surprisingly Couth does the sensible thing and asks Max directly. The Unquestionable Kael’s grin seems to grow wider at the question. He retrieves a small handkerchief from his pocket, clearing away the MEAT? around his mouth.

“Oh a terrible person, truly. You’d be best served by killing her now before her plan gets fully underway.” Max admits. “You can bet that her plans will likely involve her undermining all your own work. Then breaking you down to your weakest self before casting you out into a cold, unfeeling world to die. Best nip this one in the bud, if you know what I mean.”

In case they didn’t, Max makes a cutting motion across his throat, the universal sign for killing. It’s terribly subtle. He punctuates this with a wink.

Violent Purple sighs.

Ulsa actually considers the advice.

-

Paxton Ray! The Lafayette Bruiser! The Bayou Butcher! The.. the Redneck Einstein?

Oh here is a good one, the Murdergator!

Murdergator is actually probably one of the better names on the PRIME roster. I have no idea why you’re using a dumbass name like Paxton Ray when you have MURDERGATOR right there? When you hear Paxton Ray and then see what you look like, I don’t know? I guess I immediately wonder how many white power tattoos you had to get removed before Lindsay Troy let you in PRIME? NOT THAT YOU ARE A RACIST. You just look like one. Bruv, that’s just a scientific fact.

Regardless of your name, you and I have some business in the Main Event for ReVival 41. Seems you and I have earned ourselves a fancy, bloody Intense Title Match! And with the stipulation being that it will be a barbed wire ropes match! Can you even imagine?

You opened Night Two of UltraViolence, I was the second match that night and we both won. Now we’re both in the Main Event of the first ReVival of the year. That’s gotta mean something, right? You’re currently ranked number Nine. I’m number Ten. Vegas odds probably have you with the advantage. Knowing that communist hack, Alexei Ruslan, he’ll pick you to win the match.

Blood for blood, Butcher, this won't be no easy thang.

This isn’t just my first title match in PRIME. This isn’t just my first time facing you. This isn’t just my chance to break into the single digit ranking. No, Mister Ray, what this is is my first Hardcore style match since I have slipped back into this mortal coil. Mister Ray, how I will stack up against your opponents from the past? I've already defeated Death and the Grave, Paxton, what are you going to do? Kill me?

h̸̢̡̟̝̝͕̓è̷̦̞̹͖̤̦̬́͠h̴͖̱̹͖̙̯̬̉̏͑-̷̧̬̙͓̫̯̠͊͊̀̿̐͠ȟ̴̰̭̋̎̈́e̵̮͈̳͕̋͋͂̾͂͘͘͜͜h̵͓̳̀̓̃̃̋͝..

And what is this match to you, Paxton? You’ve already held the Intense Title, you know that lovers touch. I'm sure you are eager to feel it again.

..oh we’re going to make such wonderful violence together.

Shame after all that pain and suffering you’re still going to come up short..

..‘innit?