RED VANGUARD - CHAPTER II: RED SCARE TURNS OUT TO BE 'IVAN ATE TOO MANY BEETS THEN POOPED IN THE AIRPLANE TOILET' SCARE

The hum of the engine was a low drone, a constant vibration beneath me as the cityscape blurred past the window. Not the roar of a crowd, not the metallic clang of a gym, not the disappointing salad bar of a Ruby Tuesday, but the quiet, enclosed space of a car. I prefer the ring, the locker room, the familiar chaos. This… this felt like an in-between, a liminal space where thoughts could churn, unbidden. Ivan Stanislav. Chandler Tsonda. Bobby Neptune. Their faces, their postures, their silent judgments were burned into my mind, even though I was alone now, speeding towards the airport. It wasn’t a team, not in any sense I understood. It was a volatile cocktail of ambition and distrust, a forced alliance that felt less like a partnership and more like a high-stakes hostage situation. Ivan, a shadow of barely contained fury. Chandler, all calculating angles and veiled threats. Bobby, the wild card, was a storm that hadn’t quite broken. What was I to them? Another piece on their board? A necessary evil, a tool to be discarded when its edge dulled? The questions gnawed at me, relentless as the asphalt stretching ahead. My reflection in the tinted glass showed a man caught between worlds. The lines around my eyes, the set of my jaw, they spoke of battles won, of a path carved through grit and determination. But this path was crumbling beneath my feet, leading to a fog. I didn’t know the destination, or if I’d even recognize myself when I got there. The uncertainty was a heavy cloak, suffocating. A flicker on my phone, a reminder for the flight details back to Mexico City. Clay and I would defend our tag team titles on Night One. New World Trash. The thought was a lifeline, a familiar anchor in this churning sea of the unknown. Clay and I had meshed well, moving as one, a dance of power and precision. That was real. It was simple. It was safe. But the phantom presence of Ivan’s cold stare, Chandler’s sardonic smirk, Bobby’s unreadable face, they clung to me like boxer briefs on a hot summer day. This temporary arrangement, this forced proximity, it wasn't just about defending a title at Culture Shock. It was about something else, something I couldn’t grasp, like quadratic formulas, or the plot of Lost. I wasn’t even sure what the career ramifications would be, but it felt like it might help redefine future opportunities, and I didn’t feel entirely in control. What would happen when we actually stepped into the ring? How did I fit into this unwritten store, this twisted opaque vision? Would I come out the other side better than before? Would I be somehow affected in a way I couldn’t currently foresee? Maybe I could show that I deserve another title shot of some kind. Maybe I could take another step toward being recognized as a main-event-level competitor. Maybe. Or maybe, if I wasn’t careful, something worse. I simply didn’t know. But somehow, that thought both terrified and invigorated me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Scott had hardly closed his eyes before the cabin floor of the airplane liquefied into a river of molten neon. His seat belt transformed into a weeping willow branch, its leaves humming a low-frequency jazz melody against his thighs. He tried to blink, but his eyelids felt like heavy velvet curtains closing on a theater playing a show he didn’t want to end. Gravity shifted. The private jet didn’t just start to fly; it began to gallop. Scott looked toward the cockpit. The door had vanished, replaced by a shimmering waterfall of liquid mercury. Through the silver curtain, he saw the pilots. They weren’t men. They were giant, anthropomorphic puffins wearing aviator goggles and smoke bubblegum-scented pipes. “We’ve reached cruising altitude above the magenta mountains,” one puffin squawked, its voice echoing like a cathedral bell. “Please ensure your souls are tucked firmly under the seat in front of you.” Scott turned to his right. Bobby Neptune sat there, but his skin had taken on the translucent shimmer of an opal. Miniature galaxies swirled within his chest cavity, stars exploding and forming in the time it took Scott to draw a breath. Bobby wasn’t wearing his clothes from before; he wore a suit made of half-melted Milky Way bars. “The cosmic currents are choppy today, Scott,” Bobby said. His voice didn’t come from his mouth; it vibrated directly into Scott’s marrow. “The astral dolphins are migrating. We might hit a pocket of concentrated marshmallow fluff.” “Bobby, your ears are melting,” Scott managed to say. His own tongue felt like a dry sponge soaked in glitter. “Melting is just a state of mind, my friend,” Bobby replied. He reached into his ear, pulled out a handful of shimmering violet wax, and molded it into a tiny, barking poodle. “Gravity is just a suggestion. Ask the bear.” Scott followed Bobby’s gaze. In the center of the aisle, Ivan Stanislav had grown to a height that defied the cabin’s dimensions. His head brushed the ceiling, which had turned into a vast, swirling fresco of Renaissance angels wrestling over a giant pierogi. Ivan’s skin was no longer flesh; it was hammered Siberian iron, etched with glowing Cyrillic runes that pulsed with the beat of a distant, heavy drum. Ivan wasn’t wearing his uniform. He wore a cape made of living timber wolves, their heads resting on his shoulders, their eyes glowing with emerald fire. “The hierarchy of the sky demands tribute!” Ivan roared. Every word sent a shockwave through the cabin, turning the air into visible ripples of gold. “Scott Hunter! Why is aura the color of confused tangerine?” “I took my vitamins, Ivan,” Scott squeaked. Ivan leaned down. His face was a mountain range, his nose a jagged cliff. “Vitamins are the lies of the weak! You have consumed the seeds of the World Tree! You are now a passenger on my Flight of Absolute Authority!” Alexei Ruslan appeared from behind Ivan’s massive iron legs. Alexei had shrunk to the size of a garden gnome. He wore a tuxedo made of polished beetle wings and carried a clipboard carved from a single gemstone. His eyes were giant magnifying glasses, distorting his face into a terrifying mask of bureaucratic zeal. “He’s leaking, Great Iron One,” Alexei shrilled. He pointed a tiny crystalline finger at Scott. “His focus is drifting into the realm of soft cheeses. I shall file a grievance with the Council of Clouds.” “Do not file, Alexei,” Ivan commanded, his voice shaking the rivets of the plane. “Weave! Weave the grievance into a tapestry of discipline!” Alexei began to pull silver threads from the air, knitting a sweater at impossible speed. “I’m knitting a cage for his whimsy!” Alexei cackled. “It shall smell of mothballs and wasted potential!” Across the aisle, Chandler Tsonda sat perfectly still. He was carved entirely from obsidian, his eyes two burning rubies. A halo of golden championship belts orbited his head like the rings of Saturn, clinking together with the sound of wind chimes. “The legacy is heavy, is it not?” Chandler asked. He didn’t move his lips, yet the words tasted like cinnamon in Scott’s mouth. “The weight of the gold is the weight of the sun. Can you carry the sun, Scott? Or will you melt like the wax-winged boy of the old songs?” “I just wanted to go to the retreat,” Scott whispered. The flight attendant approached. She was a three-headed flamingo wearing a pillbox hat. She pushed a trolley that was actually a small, domesticated cloud. On the cloud sat trays of shimmering translucent fruit that screamed in high-pitched voices when touched. “Would you like some fermented starlight?” the middle head asked. “Or perhaps a bowl of compressed thunder?” the left head suggested. “The pretzels are made of petrified dragon sighs,” the right head added. “I’m not hungry,” Scott said, cowering as the cloud-trolley drifted past. “Hunger is an illusion of the digestive tract!” Ivan bellowed. He reached into the air and grabbed a lightning bolt that was zig-zagging through the cabin. He snapped it in half and offered Scott a piece. “Eat the energy of the storm! It builds the character required for Culture Shock!” Scott took the piece of lightning. It felt cold, then hot, then like a thousand tiny ants dancing the tango on his palm. He tried to bite it, but the lightning turned into a silk scarf that flew out of his hand and began to strangle a nearby seat cushion. “Everything is moving too fast,” Scott groaned. The plane’s windows began to stretch. The blue sky outside dissolved into a kaleidoscope of fractals. Giant jellyfish with the faces of famous historical philosophers floated past, their tentacles brushing against the glass with the sound of sandpaper on silk. “Socrates is judging your figure four leg lock, Scott!” Bobby Neptune laughed. He was now floating three feet above his seat, his legs crossed in a lotus position. “He says your form lacks the essential truth of the universe!” “TELL HIM TO MIND HIS OWN BUSINESS!!!” Scott yelled at the window. A jellyfish with a long white beard and a toga drifted closer. It tapped a tentacle against the glass. “The unexamined match is not worth wrestling!” the jellyfish echoed through the cabin. Alexei scurried up the side of Scott’s chair, his beetle-wing tuxedo shimmering. “You see? Even the ethereal gastropods find you lacking! You are a smudge on the blueprint of Ivan’s destiny!” “I’m a tag team champion!” Scott protested, though his voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well filled with syrup. “Champions are but glitter on the boots of the Absolute!” Ivan declared. “The Russian giant clapped his iron hands together. The sound didn’t just vibrate; it changed the color of the entire world. The cabin turned a deep, bruised purple. The seats transformed into velvet thrones, and the floor became a sea of red wine that didn’t wet anything it touched. “We shall now begin exercise of Mental Fortress!” Ivan announced. “Look into eye of void and tell me what you see!” Ivan’s chest opened like a furnace door. Inside, instead of a heart, there was a miniature, swirling black hole. Scott stared. He saw the birth of stars. He saw the heat death of the universe. He saw the small grocery store in Miami where they were always out of his favorite cereal. “I see… I see the price of milk rising,” Scott whimpered. “Weakness!” Ivan roared. “Alexei, administer the Discipline of the Seven Red Echoes!” Alexei pulled a tiny silver trumpet from his pocket and blew a note so sharp it turned into a physical spear of ice. The spear flew through the air, shattered against Scott’s forehead, and turned into a shower of lemon-scented rose petals. “You’re not being a team player, Scott,” Chandler Tsonda said. His obsidian skin was cracking, revealing a core of pure, white light. “The squad is a symphony. You are a kazoo playing in the middle of a funeral march.” “I like kazoos,” Scott muttered. The plane suddenly did a barrel roll, but Scott didn’t feel the tilt. Instead, the gravity reversed. He remained in his seat, but Bobby, Ivan, and Alexei were now standing on the ceiling. “The world is upside down!” Scott cried. “No, Hunter,” Ivan said, looking down from the ceiling like a massive, iron bat. “You are the one who is inverted. You see world through heels of your boots. Turn your soul right-side up!” The three-headed flamingo flight attendant walked past on the ceiling, her cloud-trolley following her like a loyal dog. “Tea time in the stratosphere,” she sang in a three-part harmony. “Don’t mind the screaming napkins.” Scott looked at his lap. His hands were no longer hands. They had become two small, sentient loaves of sourdough bread. They began to argue about which one of them was more artisanal. “I have a crust of gold!” the right hand yelled. “I am fermented with the tears of a thousand aroused bakers!” the left hand countered. “Shut up!” Scott screamed at his hands. “The bread speaks the truth!” Bobby Neptune shouted, his Milky Way suit casting long, dancing shadows across the cabin, and filling the air with the scent of nougat. “Listen to the yeast, Scott! It knows the secret of the rise!” The plane began to shrink. The walls pressed in, turning the cabin into a small, cramped cardboard box. Then, just as suddenly, it expanded until the ceiling was the sky and the floor was an endless desert of powdered sugar. Ivan stood atop a dune of sugar, his timberwolf cape howling at the moon. “To lead is to be the mountain!” Ivan’s voice echoed from every direction. “To follow is to be the pebble! Do you wish to be crushed, or to be the crushing force?” “I just want to land,” Scott sobbed. The sourdough hands were now trying to braid themselves together. “Landing is for those who fear the heights!” Alexei bellowed, appearing from a hole in the sugar sand. He was riding a giant mechanical scorpion made of fountain pens. “Sign the waiver, Scott! Sign the waiver of your individuality!” Alexei thrust a giant scroll at Scott. The ink on the scroll was moving, the letters crawling like ants. “I can’t read this! It’s in WingDings!” Scott yelled. “THEY ARE IMPORTANT ALIEN SYMBOLS!!!” Bobby replied angrily. “It is the language of surrender!” Ivan proclaimed. The desert of sugar began to melt into a sea of hot chocolate. Scott’s seat became a marshmallow raft, bobbing on the brown waves. “Row, Scott!” Bobby Neptune commanded. He was surfing on a giant chocolate bar, his opal skin glowing with an internal fire. “Row toward the horizon of team-building! The marshmallows are restless!” Scott poked at the chocolate sea with his sourdough hands. “This is the worst retreat ever!” The sky cracked open like an egg. A giant, golden eye peered down from the rift. The pupil was shaped like a wrestling ring. “The creator watches!” Ivan fell to his knees on his own marshmallow raft, his iron skin clanking. “Show him your resolve!” Scott looked up at the giant eye. “I won the titles with Clay!” Scott shouted at the sky. “We have the gold!” The eye blinked. A giant tear fell from the sky, a globule of salt water the size of a house. It crashed into the chocolate sea, technically and legally making it sea-salt chocolate and creating a massive tidal wave of mocha foam. “The titles are toys in the hands of giants!” Chandler Tsonda’s voice resonated through the foam. He was now a towering statue of gold, his ruby eyes beaming searchlights into the darkness like a dark lord looking for a hobbit. “The Squad Goals are the true measure of a man’s soul. Will you be a goal, Scott?” The wave hit. Scott was submerged in warm, sweet darkness. He felt himself spinning, his body stretching like saltwater taffy. He heard the muffled sound of a thousand Russian choirs singing a hymn to power tools. The darkness began to fade. The neon colors bled out, replaced by a dull, sterile gray. The smell of fermented starlight evaporated, replaced by the scene of recycled cabin air and expensive leather. The roar of the chocolate sea died down into a steady, rhythmic drone. Scott’s eyes snapped open. He gasped, his lungs burning as if he’d been underwater. He felt the cold sweat on his forehead, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He was back in his seat. The plane wasn’t a cardboard box or a desert of sugar. It was a private jet. A very normal, very expensive private jet. His hands were hands again. No sourdough. No arguments about crust. He blinked, trying to clear the lingering tracers of violet and gold from his vision. His head throbbed with the weight of a thousand hangovers. To his right, Bobby Neptune was fast asleep, his head tilted back, a thin line of drool escaping his mouth. He looked remarkably human, his skin no longer opalescent, his suit merely the one he wore when they first met. Across the aisle, Chandler Tsonda had his chin on his chest, his breathing deep and rhythmic. He wasn’t made of obsidian. He was just a man who had won many championships and seen too many airports. Even Alexei Ruslan, the bureaucratic gnome of Scott’s nightmare, was slumped in his seat, his head resting against the window, his mouth slightly open as he snored a high-pitched, whistling tune. Scott narrowed his eyes, still not entirely certain Alexei wasn’t just Simon Tillier in a costume, but that wasn’t the primary concern right now. There was one sound that never stopped. Scott turned his head slowly, his neck clicking. Ivan Stanslav sat directly across from him. He wasn’t eight-feet-tall anymore, though he was still a massive seven-foot-tall imposing wall of a man. He didn’t have a cape of wolves of iron skin. He was wearing a red uniform shirt that looked like it was struggling to contain his biceps. He was also talking. He had clearly been talking for a very long time. “...and that is why Russian army was the ultimate expression of squad,” Ivan said. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate in Scott’s ear. “They did not ask why. They did not seek the ‘vibes.’ They sought the perimeter. They should shield wall.” Ivan leaned forward, his massive hands clasped together. His eyes were locked onto Scott’s. He had noticed Scott was awake. “You are back with us, Hunter,” Ivan noted, his expression unreadable. “Good. You missed the segment on the Mongolian horse archers, but the lesson of the Prussian infantry is more pertinent to your current lack of structural integrity.” Scott tried to speak, but his throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. “Ivan… how long…” “I have been speaking for ninety minutes,” Ivan interrupted. “The others have failed test of endurance. They have retreated into cowardice of sleep. But you, Scott Hunter… you have the eyes of a man who has seen the fire.” Scott felt a wave of nausea. He was trapped. The plan was a pressurized tube at thirty thousand feet, and he was the only person awake to hear Ivan Stanislav’s manifesto on the philosophy of dominance and obedience. “Authority is not a crowd,” Ivan continued, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that was still loud enough to rattle Scott’s teeth. “Authority is a weight. It is the weight of the mountain on the pebble. You remember mountain, yes?” Scott shuddered. The dream felt too close. “I… I think so.” “Good,” Ivan said, a grim smile touching his lips. “Now, let us discuss the three tiers of the subordinate psyche. Tier one is resistance of ego. You are currently here. We must move you to tier two: acceptance of the inevitable.” Ivan reached into a leather briefcase at his feet and pulled out a thick, bound manuscript. “I have written a treatise,” Ivan said. “It is entitled ‘The Iron Tether: Binding the Individual to the Collective Will.’ I shall read the introduction. It is only sixty-four pages.” Scott looked at the sleeping forms of Bobby and Alexei. He looked at the closed cockpit door. He looked at the window, where the stars zoomed past in a perfectly normal, non-kaleidoscopic sky. He almost wished the three-headed flamingo would come back. “Page one,” Ivan began, clearing his throat with a sound like a rock slide. “In the beginning, there was void, and the void required order…” Scott leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes, but the voice followed him, relentless and heavy, pinning him to his seat more effectively than any seat belt ever could. He was a captive audience, whether he liked it or not. (He did not.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “We cannot win in team situations or in relationships by ourselves. It is like trying to pick up a pencil with only one finger; even if that one finger is extremely strong, it will prove almost impossible to pick up that pencil unless you use your other fingers or some other part of your hand. Teamwork is a bit like using all of your fingers. Each one is unique and contributes something different, but they unite in pursuit of a common goal.” - Terry Orlick