Kerry and Rezin's Bogus Adventure

“You deserve this.”

The fog is thick, hugging the southern face of the Mountain like a white shawl.

“Tell it to yourself, Face, whenever you wonder why you’re in the place you’re in.”

I can barely make out the branches of the Douglas firs that line the road.

“All this failure is yours, and yours alone.”

The white gravel beneath my feet is my only compass in this gray limbo.

“I didn’t ask much from you.

“Only cooperation. 

“And understanding.”

My 'guest’, for lack of a better term, hasn't shut up since the atrocity that was the last match.

“But you chose the path of insolence.”

In fact, he’s been gleefully riding the self-loathing train straight to Told-ya-so Town.

“You chose to be weak.”

I prefer to think I chose to be a human being. 

But I guess arguing that is moot to something that thinks like an animal.

“Now you see what you are without me.” 

A fighter?

A friend?

“A fraud.”

Ah.

Gotcha.

Thanks for clearing that up.

“Facile as the appropriated ink on your back.”

Does he even realize how LONG that tattoo session lasted?

“You deserve this, Face.”

Yeah…

I know I do.

🐉

There was nothing outwardly remarkable about Forest Road 84.

The winding stretch of gravel was only one of many that cut through the evergreen woodlands beneath the shadow of Rainier. It led to no trails or camping grounds, and offered little in the way of scenery.

And yet, that unremarkable and nondescript nature also made it ideal for matters that required a layer of privacy and discretion.

Like the business at hand.

Twenty minutes past the hour of four, the stillness of the forest was broken by the roar of an approaching engine.

The black box-style van burst forth from the fog like the chariot of death, kicking up dirt and rocks in its wake.

But this chariot did not come to collect.

Only deliver.

A bulky cardboard box came flying out through the open side door, hitting the gravel with a thud as the van flew by and disappeared back into the mist from whence it came.

Seconds later, something within COUGHED.

In an instant, the top exploded into an eruption of packing peanuts as the upper half of a bald, shirtless, tattooed, and disheveled man burst itself forth into the world.

Spitting out a mouthful of foam kernels, the blinking and bloodshot eyes of the Goat Bastard took in his strange new surroundings.

Once his vision came into focus, he immediately noticed the irate Emerald Apex looming over him.

“Ah, KURRY!” saluted Rezin. “I see ya got my MESSAGE!”

A groan of exasperation escaped Kerry Kuroyama.

“You can’t help but waste our time, Face.”

“Erik…” he began, quiet and controlled.

His hands found the punk rock pugilist’s throat.

“Where the fuck is my koala?”

Eyes bulging and incapable of speech, the dopesmoking daredevil frantically pointed deeper down into the foam peanuts pooled around his waist.

It was then when the fat and furry head of the Eucalyptic Apex emerged.

“Enjoy the fieldtrip, Fuzzball?” mused Kerry, releasing his grip on Rezin’s throat to help his girthy koala kompanion out of the box.

Koalayama replied with a satisfied snort. His glazed-over eyes suggested he was either high, half-asleep, or running on five brain cells.

Probably all three.

“Ya shoulda SEEN him out there, Kurry!”

Still gasping for air, Rezin clumsily flopped out of the box and spilled peanuts everywhere.

“All high as a muthafugger, blowin’ up PIG RIGS left ‘n’ right in his lil’ koala-tank… ya got a regular ANARKOALA there!”

Kerry ignored the bulk of the Escape Artist’s insane ramblings as he secured his marsupial sidekick into his designated backpack carrier.

“All this, for a dumb, constantly drunk animal.”

“Happy to hear…” he said dismissively. “Now, about the other thing you stole…”

Barely acknowledging him, the Goat Bastard set a spliff the size of a baby’s arm into the corner of his mouth and lit the tip with his trusty Zippo.

“Right, yeah… yer girl’s weed,” he said, taking the first drag. “About that…”

Refusing to elaborate any further, he gestured for Kerry to follow and began walking, heading off the trail and into the woods.

Slinging the straps of the koala carrier around his shoulder, Kerry followed. He wasn’t about to let the bastard out of sight until he had been compensated.

“Don’t tell me you smoked it…”

Ahead of him, Rezin’s shoulders lurched into a shrug.

“I mean, really… what were ya expectin’?” he said. “I’m the DOPESMOKER! It’s, like, the VERY DEFINITION of what I DO! Chalk it up as SPOILS of WAR in the FIGHT against FASCISM!”

“Goddamnit, Erik…” groaned Kerry. “Now I have to kill you.”

Despite the threat, the Escape Artist calmly took another drag off his spliff.

“Sure, yeah, I suppose ya COULD do that…”

He raised a finger.

“OR… I can take ya to a place where ya can get yer weed back, PLUS DIVIDENDS!”

“Why is this piece of shit still breathing?”

Kerry felt his teeth grinding.

“What the fuck are you on about, Erik?”

The Goat Bastard twirled around to face him, his eyes the size of golf balls.

“Hear me out here, Kurry, cuz I’m bein’ SURRIOUS right naow…” he began. “An UNDERGROUND HYDROPONICS GROWING LAB!”

Like a wizard of trash, he threw his black-stained hands up toward the heavens.

“EL DOPE-RADO, the City of GANJA!!”

Kerry stared back at the marijuana-addled maniac completely stonefaced and expressionless.

“IT’S TRUE, I tell ya! The GOVERNMENT built it back in the sixties to test NEW and EXPERIMENTAL SATIVA STRAINS for BIOLOGICAL CHEMICAL WARFARE! That was ‘til the great state o’ Washington officially legalized DOPESMOKIN’ to the masses in twenny-twelve, and then they just up and ABANDONED it, and left behind TONS and TONS of raw, uncut FLOWER!”

“Quick snap of the neck. Nobody will ever know.”

“Just so happens I was plannin’ to raid the joint when we concluded our business here,” Rezin went on. “I mean, WHY do ya THINK I brought ya out to MILE FIVE on FOREST ROAD EIGHTY-FOUR?!”

Clueless, Kerry shrugged. “I don’t know… because the math fits your stupid stoner gimmick?”

“It’s not a gimmick, DAMBIT!” Rezin scolded, angrily waving a finger. “It’s a CODE! And what it MEANS is that the ENTRANCE is NEARBY!”

Beyond annoyed, and growing increasingly impatient, Kerry pinched the bridge of his nose, as though it prevented his brain from leading out through his nostrils.

“Erik… how do you expect me to believe you’re not just pulling this half-cocked story out of your ass so you can buy time until you have the chance to slip away?”

The Goat Bastard’s gaze pivoted from human to koala.

“Yo, Wally… hit me with yer patented BULLSHIT DETECTOR!”

Kerry Koalayama, ever the gadgetsmith, pulled out a shiny, three-pronged wand and flipped a switch while pointing it at the dopesmoking daredevil.

After a few seconds of a persistent warbling sound, the light turned green, and the Eucalpytic Apex flashed his human counterpart a double thumbs up of approval.

Feeling validated, the Goat Bastard grinned his shit-eating grin.

“C’MAAAWWN, KURRY! Take a lil’ break from bein’ so SURRIOUS alla time and step into yer WILD SIDE! I mean, WHADDYA GOTTA LOSE at this point?!”

Kerry groaned.

Was he really about to go through with this?

The alternative, of course, was crawling back to Ami empty handed.

…

“Yeah, no WAY that’s happening…”

There really was no choice.

“You have my blind faith in this smooth-brained animal to thank, dipshit,” declared Kuroyama, thumbing over his shoulder to the intoxicated koala. “Lead the way…”

🐉

“Arright, so let’s get the STRAWBVIOUS outta the way here…”

There was no telling how long they had walked.

The stone-walled tunnel seemed to stretch off into infinity.

Deeper under the mountain, they trudged forth, probing the endless black ahead of them with a set of koala-made flashlights.

Of course, the further in they went, the harder it was for the Goat Bastard to remain silent.

“Have ya visited the BLACK LODGE lately?”

Kerry squinted at Rezin in confusion.

“...what?”

“Woulda been a lotta red curtains, some dark jazz music… prolly Tony Gamble dancin’ around, talkin’ backwards and shit.”

“What the fuck are you babbling about? Is this another Twin Peaks reference?”

“Just WORK with me here, Kurry!” insisted the Escape Artist. “In order to HELP YA with yer BEAST PROBLEM, we gotta narrow down what it IS!”

Kerry felt his stomach tighten.

“He knows too much.”

“I don’t have a ‘beast problem’, Erik.”

The Goat Bastard chuckled.

“Heh heh... do we need to pull out the Bullshit Detector again?”

The Emerald Apex grumbled.

He was far from ready to talk about this openly.

“How much further until we get to this stupid underground weed lab?” asked Kerry, desperate to change the subject. “I need to get my ass back to the Dojo.”

“Ah, riiiiiight… got yer big, important MAIN EVENT to prepare for, yeah?”

Kerry nodded. “Something like that, yeah…”

“Important” was an understatement.

“Only to you, Face.”

Kerry was oh-for-two starting off the new year, and feeling like all the hard-earned clout he built up through 2025 was quickly evaporating.

But he wasn’t dumb to the meaning of being in a main event with a star like Tsonda. And he knew this was more than a friendly one-off between two talented stars to close off the night.

For Kerry, this match was a referendum. His opportunity to prove if the Emerald Apex truly extended up to that upper echelon.

Because Tsonda belonged on a level that included the likes of Youngblood, and Stanislav, and Jiles, and Avalon.

And FLAMBERGE. And Farthington.

Names of significance and substance, recognized as the true apex of PRIME.

None of which Kerry had ever formally fought in a one-on-one setting, until now.

“Unless, of course, you’ve been set up to fail.”

He had to remind himself that the sting of failure was temporary.

And the Five Star Championship was never meant to be the endgame.

“Might wanna consider addressin’ this BEAST issue then, yeah?” probed Rezin. “I warned ya about what would happen if ya didn’t FEED IT, Kurry! Ya think it’s any COINCIDENCE yer track record’s been SHIT since then?!”

Kerry shook his head.

“Completely unrelated.”

"Bullshit."

“Ya can’t fool me, KER-BEAR!” declared the Goat Bastard, wagging a finger. “Yer SANITY’S BREAKIN’!!”

“Only when I’m around you…”

“WAIT!”

Faint glimmers appeared off in the murk.

Their lights, reflecting off a metal surface.

“EUR-TWEAK-A!” exclaimed Rezin.

They jogged the rest of the way until the large metal doors came into view.

The spot of Kerry’s flashlight caught the dust-covered sign hanging overhead.

DTRA INSTITUTE OF CANNIBINOID RESEARCH FACILITY #5

The burning ember at the end of the dopesmoker’s joint glowed bright as he narrowed in on the slightly ajar positioning of the heavy metal security doors.

“Strange…” he observed. “Entrance is arready breached. Saves us the time of havin’ to crack it, I guess…”

It was then when Kerry caught a looming shape in his periphery, prompting him to swing his light over to the side.

When it registered what he was looking at, he went pale.

Clearly, while the place may have been abandoned for years, they weren’t the first to discover it.

“Um… Erik?”

Rezin turned his flashlight over to where Kerry had trained his own. Seeing it for himself, his eyes went wide with dread, joint dropping from his agape mouth.

The expression colloquially recognized as “rezintrippin”.

“Oh… SHUCKS!!”

The bone totem was an eight-foot obelisk of grisly horror.

Human skulls, spines, and ribcages, stacked and arranged with an eldritch sense of religious purpose, and marked with ancient runes in the form of potleafs and yinyangs and UFOs.

The two stood for several seconds in prolonged silence, lights fixated on the gruesome pillar of human remains.

“Nice.”

“...what the hell am I looking at, Erik?”

Rezin, paralyzed with fear, could only stammer out a series of grunts.

It was only when Kerry felt the light tap on his shoulder from the koala kounterpart hanging on his back that he realized they weren’t alone.

When the two turned around, they were immediately greeted by a wall of pointed wooden spears, wielded by a mob of twisted and malnourished hobos wearing leather facemasks made of human skin.

Rezin immediately raised his hands in surrender.

“CANNABIS CANNIBALS!!”

🐉

“So like, do ya talk to yer evil self in the mirror?”

A cauldron of boiling liquid was suspended over the roaring bonfire.

Within the repurposed main lobby of the former hydroponics lab, the members of the long lost cult of weed-crazed man-eating subterranean homeless people danced and contorted in ritualistic fervor.

“...what?”

Bound to heavy wooden logs that were stood up and positioned only a few feet apart, Kerry and Rezin had a front-row view of the festivities that preceded the cannibalistic feast.

“Ya know, like Willem Dafoe in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man?”

Kuroyama rolled his eyes. Hearing it put like that made it seem even more cringeworthy.

“No…”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could just barely make out the girthy shape of Kerry Koalayama creeping through the shadows.

🐉

“Okay, mebbe it’s an alien symbiote?”

Deep in the shadows of the lab, the two frantically made their caper.

“What??”

Kerry worked his way up the row of growth barrels, pulling up stalks of the marijuana plants one after another. Rezin was close behind him, catching the score in an oversized canvas bag.

“Think... did ya ever come into contact with something black and gooey from outer space, but sentient, and like, won’t ever shut up??”

Their heist remained thankfully unseen to the tribe, who stood transfixed at the sight of Kerry Koalayama, wearing a curly blonde wig and lipstick ala Bugs Bunny, dancing the can-can before the bonfire.

“Other than you? No.”

Rezin took a studious drag off his freshly rolled joint…

…and coughed.

The cannibals twirled to the direction of the sound.

Spotting their sacred trove being despoiled by the interlopers, they collectively brayed and ululated in bloodthirsty fury.

🐉

“OOH, WAIT, I got it now!!”

The minecart barreled recklessly through the endless catacombs beneath Rainier.

Kerry gripped the sides, fighting to keep it from flying off the track.

“For fuck’s sake, Erik… can this WAIT?!”

Anxiously, he looked back to the stoner cannibals riding in their own cart, hot on their heels and slowly catching up.

“Mebbe ya got exposed to a buncha KUROYAMMA RADIATION!” Rezin went on, absentmindedly rolling up a fresh join in the middle of a minecart chase. “Now whenever ya get angry, ya turn into THE INCREDIBLE DRUNK!”

The ground gave away, and the track continued over a set of scaffolding rigged up over an underground river of lava.

The pursuing cannibals steadily closed the gap, allowing one daring tie-dyed crumbum to leap from cart to cart.

“Goddamnit, Erik,” Kuroyama shouted as he began punching the shit out of the blood-crazed weed junkie hanging off the back. “This isn’t something out of a fucking comic book!”

A heavy right hook finally broke the grip of the ganja goof, who immediately tumbled into the path of the other cart, sending it careening off the track and dumping its screaming occupants into the river of molten rock below.

🐉

The fog had lifted over the Mountain.

Night had settled over the Pacific Northwest.

“SHIT-SHIT-SHIT-GO-GO-GO!!”

Huffing and puffing, Kerry and Rezin came hauling ass out of the cave entrance, the former with a koala tucked under his arm and the latter with a bulging sack of marijuana plants slung over his shoulder.

From out of the void of the Goat Bastard’s pants came a crudely made incendiary device. Using the cherry on his joint to light the wick, he flung it back over his shoulder as they cleared the entrance.

With a thunderous BOOM, the blast of the pipebomb brought the rocky overhang collapsing down into a massive plume of dirt, dust, and flame, effectively sealing off the mouth of the cave.

Seconds passed as the two caught their breath.

Then the Goat Bastard punched the air in triumph.

“HA-HAAAWW, IN and OUT like the WIND!”

Kerry resisted the urge to punch the bastard in his face, reminding himself that they had miraculously accomplished what they set out to do.

“Think of what can be accomplished if we worked together.”

“Yeah… like the wind.”

They turned and began the short hike down the slope of the mountain back to Forest Road 84.

“But SURRIOUSLY, Kurry… if I’m gonna help ya with yer BEAST, ya gotta GIVE ME a lil’ MORE to WORK with!”

“Last time you offered to help me, it didn’t exactly end well…”

“C’mon, dawg, there’s a PERFECTLY REASONABLE EXPLANATION for that; I was SOBER!!”

Kerry chuffed. “Not sure you’d be any more help to me now that you’re perpetually high as fuck again.”

Then a thought came to him.

Why were they even talking about this to begin with?

“But maybe you can explain to me how you, of all people, can SEE the damn thing?”

“Finally, you ask a SMART question…”

“Ah, right…” said Rezin with a nod and a drag off his spliff. “So, here’s the thing--”

Headlights flashed on, instantly cutting through the dark.

Caught in the light, the two froze like deer.

“Guess that’ll hafta wait for our NEXT bogus adventure!” said Rezin.

A door opened and slammed shut.

Then woman’s figure stepped before the blinding twin high beams.

Feet set apart and hands on her hips, it was clear by the posture of her silhouette that whoever it was, she was not happy.

“THERE you are, you chucklefucks…”

The figure approached, boots angrily stomping into the gravel.

Gradually, the murderous glare of Ami Troy came into view.

“Ami…” Kerry stammered and smiled sheepishly. “S-sup?”

“Don’t you ‘aMi SuP’ ME!” she retorted, gently pulling Kerry Koalayama out of his arms. “Io has been waiting for HOURS! You are in the DEEPEST SHIT when you get back!”

“EVENIN’, Miss AMI the DOMMY!” interjected Rezin, offering up his bounty. “Allow me to HUMBLY PRESENT this WHOLESOME TRIB--BAA-HOOT!!”

The Goat Bastard curled up as the toe of her boot connected with his groin.

“As for you…”

With the marsupial still tucked under one arm, she spun, bringing the same boot swinging around and slamming into the side of his head with a spinning heel kick.

“BLEHGK!!”

Rezin cartwheeled ass over teakettle off the impact. He came to land on his chin, rubbery legs extended toward the sky like the branches of a weird, contorted human tree of agony.

Scooping up and tossing the weed sack over her shoulder, the Merry Mischief Maker leaned in over him and offered her sage advice.

“STOP BREAKIN’ INTO PEOPLE’S HOUSES and STEALIN’ THEIR WEED, DIPSHIT!”

“I was… fightin’... fascism… urk...” he groaned meekly.

With koala and weed both secured, Ami promptly marched back to her vehicle, fitting the former into his carseat in the back and tossing the latter into the trunk.

Kerry made for the passenger side, favoring the Escape Artist with a smile and a friendly salute.

“Good hanging, Erik!" he said. “Nearest park station is twenty miles up the road! Happy hiking!”

His hand was inches away from the handle when the car suddenly reversed out of reach.

In a flash, Ami pulled her whip into a U-turn and slammed on the gas, pelting the both of them with a hail of gravel as she peeled out.

In the fading red glow of her brakelights, Kerry’s expression melted from confused to disheartened.

“...I’d say we got off lucky.”

Then the Goat Bastard was at his side, offering him the joint.

“Twenny miles to the nearest station, eh?”

🐉

Nothing but hunger.

That’s where I’m coming from, Chandler.

My title was stolen from me. My standing here in PRIME is at risk.

I have nothing left but my name.

My name, and this hunger.

Oddly enough, I miss this feeling.

For the first time in a long time, I can fight with nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

No fear of consequences. No anxiety over the repercussions of my actions. 

Only the hunger.

And the pure, untethered, relentless pro wrestling savagery that comes from it.

I don’t need to feed what drives that hunger, Chandler.

Unleashed between those ropes, it will hunt you down and feed itself.

Don’t let the fact that there’s no longer a belt on my shoulder lead you to believe I’m any less dangerous in that ring.

I’m not getting lost staring into the stars anymore, Chandler. My eyes are firmly set on the PINNACLE.

The scene at the top is overdue for a shake-up. At ReVival, the first tremors will be felt.

Because I know I am ready. And I know I’m able to do it.

And, most of all…

I know I deserve it.