Crestfallen, the tecnicos gathered at ringside to discuss their losses. Bandito took it up upon himself to tend to Lazuli’s injury by providing with a shoulder massage (even though the pain was in the young fighter’s legs). El Amante Intoxico, unusually glum, couldn't help but spread his sore emotions to his compadres, which didn’t help matters. As the younger fighters licked their wounds, the veteran King Temo scowled, more disappointed than furious.
Which, for Laz, was arguably worse.
“I’m…so sorry, my King,” Laz said, wearily. “I got ahead of myself.” He eyed the rudos gathering in the corner of the ring, celebrating their triumph with a slew of taunts and self absorbed muscle flexes.
Temo sighed. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or…perhaps my age is starting to show after all.”
“I cannot believe I let that scoundrel get to me!” El Amante lamented, unconsciously striking a dramatic pose (a bad habit of his). “I was far too emotional!”
“Wow, they really exploited your weaknesses, huh.”
The three fighters, all surprised, looked to their comic relief valet. The roguish Bandito blinked. “What? I am just saying! I may be a thief, but I am no liar. I am actually quite blunt.”
Temo scratched his neck and looked askance. “Pink Bandito is right. The rudos targeted our insecurities. A brilliant tactic, to be sure, and just as devious as effective.”
“Divided and conquered,” El Amante added, pounding his fist into his palm for emphasis. "Trying to all play the role of the main character didn't seem to work. I attempted to be like the suave, sexy, hero in a telenovela...but I was usurped by my evil twin!" El Amante clutched his head (still dramatically) in feigned agony. "HOW COULD I POSSIBLY BE SO BLIND!?"
“But…” Laz added, ignoring El Amante's antics, “if we stand united together, we can play to each other’s strengths.” He looked over at the rudos, who all still appeared to be engaging, intimidating, or posing for the crowd in their own fashion. At least they were easily distracted. “See? Those idiots can’t get along. They’re all in it for themselves. They may try to cheat, but they can’t coordinate.”
The mood had shifted. Temo placed his hand on Laz’s shoulder. “Now, you are thinking like a fighter.”
“And a lover,” Bandito added, wiggling his eyebrows. “No, but seriously, you each do your own thing very well. Now string your moves together together…” Bandito did a little two-step to demonstrate. “Like a saucy, Argentine tango.”
Laz blinked. “But we’re in Mexico.”
“No, no, I understand his vision” El Amante, completely serious, said. He patted his bumbling valet on the back. “Bandito may be a clown, but is it not always the fool who tells the truth!? Now, my handsome friends, come huddle…we shall concoct a plan.”
It had been a strange match for King Temo, but as he stood back and took in this new generation of spellbreakers, hatching strategy, his heart filled with pride. Maybe these two young hotshots can pull this off after all.
Round 3.
It was a standoff worthy of a cinematic western. The haughty, bad boy bull on one side; and the young her--in lapis blue--on the other. Minotaur flexed his bicep. The crowd booed him.
“Your countrymen have no taste,” Fernando snorted. “Which is why I am going to take out my frustration on you now.” The Minotaur Matador licked his lips with a long tongue. “I was going to send you to the slaughter house, but perhaps I will turn you into one of my little bull boys after all.”
Laz gagged. “You’re so gross, dude!”
The bull charged. “HOW DARE YOU!”
Once again, Laz was caught in a tight headlock, with his face smashed up against the bull’s smothering pectoral.
“Now, you will drink my muscle milk or be suffocated by my heaving, heavy, HARD pectoral!”
But he’s a male bodied dude, he can't produce m–you know what, I don’t want to find out And as Laz formulated these thoughts–and not wanting to ponder Fernando’s body composition or glandular composition any further–he quietly channelled his magick into the space just above the bull-headed brute’s head.
“Jsshspptt.”
Fernando cranked the headlock on harder. “What was that, little brat? I couldn’t hear you as my boobacious, man-meaty, thick, juicy grade-A, chest is covering your snotty mouth.” He let the hold go, just slightly. “Well?”
Laz smirked. “Jackpot.”
“Huh?”
Fernando didn’t even see it coming. Laz’s lapis stone slammed into his head at full force.
CRACK!
Fernando’s eyes swivelled back into his skull. “My…beautiful…head…”
The Spanish rudo stumbled backwards, giving Laz some breathing room. The Prince, shocked his technique worked, looked over to El Amante–and Temo–who nodded approvingly.
“You need to stop bathing in cologne,” Laz said, running up and flipping in the air. “IT SMELLS TERRIBLE. GET A BETTER BRAND, CHEAPSKATE!”
Laz jumped into the air, grabbing onto Fernando’s horns, and used them as a vaulting horse to pivot upwards and over to El Amante, tagging him in. El Amante jumped up onto the ropes, defying gravity, flashing his beautiful smile at the audience, and eliciting cheers of “HE’S SO HANDSOOOOOME!”.
“Really took the bull by the horns, chico!” the luchador winked. “Now, it’s time to take HIM to the slaughter house!”
“That’s…my…line,” Fernando said, still punch-drunk.
El Amante jumped into the air, weathering himself in pink light. “Cupid’s Arrow Dive!”
The human missile hit its target, sending up a mushroom cloud of pink rose petals and hearts. Fernando, with hardly any life left in him, just managed to pull himself over and tag in Serpent. Rex did the rest, ripping Fernando’s body out of the ring and dumping him onto the ground–where the crowd completed his undignified defeat by pelting him with garbage.
Laz, breathing heavily, gave his two bigger pals a thumbs up. “Thanks, dads!”
“Dads!?” El Amante and Temo said, in turn, looking at each other and blushing. But the luchador of love did not linger on the subject for long–he had more important matters to deal with–namely, Serpent staring him down.
The demon’s eyes brightened, flashing emerald green. “We aren’t so different, you and I. Come. You can still join me, you know. Just like your–”
BAM!
El Amante’s elbow collided with Serpent’s jaw, nearly twisting his head 180 degrees around.
“...Fa…jsther…” Serpent said, as he spit out his own bloody fang onto the canvas. Before he could fall, El Amante grabbed him by the neck and brought him to his feet.
“You are a cliché,” El Amante snorted. “Cliché is predictable. It is also a French word, so I am nto 100% what it means. The difference between you and I, serpent? Well, there’s many. But for one, I fight for love, not for hatred. And NUMBER TWO…I am very unpredictable. LIKE THIS!”
SMOOCH!
Laz and Temo’s eyes bugged out of their head, as the crowd gasped. “Oh my goodness, he kissed him.”
El Amante kept the lip-lock on tight, causing Serpent’s eyes to transition from alien green to rosy pink.
Now, let’s see what you truly hide in your heart. What is your desire, mi amor? I shall turn it into your downfall! Ah…what is THIS?
El Amante’s gifts invited him into a vision of Serpent’s most romantic desires. A handsome, broad shouldered, muscular man with long, blonde hair–naked save his white briefs, flung his ponytail back in the water of an outdoor shower. Looked like a barn, or a stable, by El Amante’s reckoning.
OOOOH. Who is this most studly of studs, this most muscular of muchachos…BUT NO! Can it be? It’s…el jefe himself! Colt!
In the monochrome vision (reminded El Amante of a badly produced perfume commercial) the coquettish cowboy winked at the viewer. “What you starin’ at, partner? You wanna ride th–”
Ahhhhh okay, that’s MORE than enough. My goodness! So, this scoundrel's hatred of Colt has only masked his TRUE intentions: LUST! Not that I blame him, of course. Colt is a delicious, FIERY, meaty piece of Texas BBQ. But he is a father! And besides, he loves Varla Montes. And also, Serpent is EVIL. He would be a TERRIBLE match for Colt! He probably leaves the toileT seat up and takes his shoes off on the plane, and that's not the sort of partner one of my best friends–AND EMPLOYERS--should be dating. No, this will not do. Huh. I think I am overthinking this. I should probably stop kissing Serpent and get back to the match. For now, I–THE WARRIOR OF LOVE–know the dastard’s weakness.
…Vaqueros ;)
El Amante removed his mouth from Serpent (now drooling and delirious). “You need a mint!”
The dastardly rudo came-to faster than anticipated. “Curse you, BOY. My enchantments may have no power over you, but I can still out-muscle you any day of the week!” Serpent grabbed El Amante and whipped him into the ropes, but El Amante merely rode the momentum, flipped over Serpent’s head (stopping to blow a kiss to the crowd, slo-mo style as he did) and latched onto his back, threading his legs over Serpent’s thighs and yanking his arms back painfully.
“IT’S SUNDAY!” El Amante declared. “And now I will ride you like a cowboy!”
Serpent broke out in a hot, red sweat. “N…not a Pallo Special. N…no!”
“I will ride you like you are a bull!”
From ringside, Fernando, an ice-pack on his head, groaned. “I…resent that remark.”
“This is it!” Lazuli declared, white-knuckling the rope. “Come on, ref! Get over there!’
The ref, still delirious from before, wobbled over to check Serpent’s submission. “I…am doing my best.”
“He is doing his best,” Bandito echoed, from ringside, with a nod. Shivering with anticipation, and ecstatic to see the tide of battle changed, El Amante’s protege’s terrible attention span served him for the better–his eyes were drawn to the hulking form of T. Rex stalking the ring like a predator.
Bandito gasped. “A shark in the water! Or a dinosaur, rather. Ref, watch out!”
Unfortunately, Bandito didn’t know the Spanish for ‘watch out’, and so the ref had no idea what the gringo was saying as he asked Serpent for the submission.
“What do you say, Serpent?”
“NEVER!” Serpent hissed, maniacally. “Back away, you old fool!”
“Okay, wow, I have feelings too.”
El Amante clamped the hold on tighter. “Apologize to him! He is a working man.”
Serpent growled in agony. “I…WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE TO THE WORKING MAN!!”
But just as El Amante felt his powers replenish, and was ready to turn all of Serpent’s pain into instant pleasure (no doubt causing him to moan in an entirely different way) the world was ripped out beneath the Warrior of Love’s feet! T. Rex’s claws sank into El Amante’s meaty calves, forcing him down into the mat.
“GOT YOU!” T. Rex snarled.
El Amante lost the grip on Serpent and fell backwards. T. Rex used the leverage and pulled himself up into the ring, just as he activated his powers and ‘super-sized’ himself anew. He grabbed the ref–by the head–and tossed him over his shoulder. The poor man fell into the commentator's table, knocking the whole staff into the horrified crowd.
It was anarchy! Even worse, Fernando had managed to dust off his head wound and re-enter the ring. All three rudos circled El Amante, rising up from the ground.
“Normally this many muscular men leering down at me is my idea of a fun evening,” El Amante said, eyeing each villain. “But something tells me, you guys don’t have a safe word.”
Lazuli looked over at Temo, whose face had fallen into despair. “We gotta get in there, dude!”
Temo glared at his young apprentice. “First off, do not call a ‘king’, ‘dude’. Second, the ref is out! We cannot enter the ring and take advantage of the situation. We are heroes!”
“If we don’t, El Amante is gonna get his amazingly toned butt KICKED! And then his boyfriend, Iggy, is gonna’ to blame us and…” Lazuli gulped. “Look, Iggy Astro is scarier than those three doofuses combined. And besides that, my King, sometimes heroes have to bend the rules too. I understand you come from a clean-fighting generation. Believe me, I prefer a fair fight…mostly because it’s less stressful. But we need to stick up for our friend.”
Temo lowered his head. “Perhaps you are right. This game has changed. Well, my young friend, don’t just stand there…”
The wind magi summoned a gale from below, and the graceful man rode it to the top rope. “Can you keep up with this old man?” He extended his hand to Laz.
Smiling, and trying not to get emotional, Lazuli took the hint, grabbed Temo’s hand, and allowed the stronger man to throw him into the air. As he did, Lazuli twirled around, encasing his body in glittering, radiant crystal. He’d turned himself into a weapon.
And just in the nick of time too. As T. Rex and Serpent wound up for a double kick to El Amante’s head, Lazuli crashed into Rex, knocking the energy out of him and reverting the giant man to a (less) giant size.
“What the devil?” Serpent spat, looking over at Temo coming at him hot. “I don’t think so, grandpa!”
Serpent jumped out of Temo’s path. But it was only then that Serpent noticed that Temo wasn’t aiming to crash into him at all. He was aiming for his feet.
The whirlwind sprouted from Temo’s collision into the mat, like a shockwave of wind, and picked Serpent clean off the ground.
“Grandpa?” Temo asked, straightening his back and cracking his neck. “No. More like…daddy.”
Lazuli’s crystalline cocoon shattered, embedding chunks of rock in Rex’s back. “GAAAAAAH!” the dino yowled.
The three fighters, Prince Lazuli, Temo, and El Amante, stood back to back, facing down their foes–three generations of heroes.
“Let’s do this.”
The Matador Minotaur snorted. “I’ve had enough of you (frustratingly attractive) Mexicans BUTCHERING MY LANGUAGE! THIS IS FOR THE GLORY OF THE KINGDOM OF SPAIN!”
Out of graceful tactics, Fernando went for a dirty head-butt, aiming his horns right for El Amante’s chest. El Amante was quicker–he dove right underneath Fernando and hoisted him up with all his strength, making the bull airborne.
El Amante looked up. “Fine. Grathias!”
SLAM!
Fernando twitched at El Amante’s feet. “D….de nada…”
Temo locked up with Serpent, whose arms and legs were already sore from El Amante’s submission attempt. “I will take everything you hold dearly,” Serpent snarled at the veteran.
Temo rolled his eyes. “You don’t even know what I like.”
This time, Temo took a page out of Prince Lazuli’s book. He used his force of wind to push himself away from Serpent’s clutches, into the ropes, where he bounced off and jumped into air, wrapping his legs around Serpent’s neck.
Prince Lazuli gasped, as did the audience. “Is he…going for it?”
“An old favorite,” Temo said, mid-air. “A hurricane hurricanrana!”
Temo and Serpent found themselves in a twisty dance, spinning and tumbling again and again in the air, with Temo’s wind storm keeping them aloft. Temo, unaffected, had no problem with the move. But Serpent’s head was scrambled by the dizzying motion. All the better, as Temo used the momentum of his wind storm to SLAM Serpent right into the ground, next to T. Tex.
“Two down,” Lazuli said. He looked up to see T. Rex removing shards of rock from his back.
The monster flicked a piece away and bore his fangs at Lazuli. “I WILL EAT YOU!”
“Which part first?” Lazuli said, slipping under Rex’s legs again. He went for the ropes. This time, however, he grabbed onto the top rope, like a gymnastic bar, and used it to flip himself over and through the ropes. Lazuli’s boots took on a strange transformation, shifting from rubber to solid lapis–veined with streaks of golden pyrite. The Prince’s boots began to glow with radiant intensity.
“ULTRAMARINE SHOCK!” Lazuli said, driving the force of his feet into T. Rex’s gut.
The monster’s eyes bulged out of his head, as the dinosaur reared back and spit the wind knocked out of him. Onto his back, the great east fell, joining his knocked out comrades.
Meanwhile, at the ringside, Bandito yanked the ref and pushed him onto the ring apron. “I’m not kissing you again,” he said, slapping the man gently across the face with his signature rose. “Wake up, abuelo!”
The man groaned. “I’m only thirty-five!” he said, crawling over into the ring. “Gotta…do…my…job.”
ONE! TWO! THREE! DING DING DING.
The crowd erupted into applause. El Amante, exhausted and disbelief, let his hair fly over his face as he leaned forward. Lazuli and Temo were all-too happy to give their friend a hand, and raised his arms on either side, in triumph.
“Holy crap, I can’t believe that worked,” Lazuli, dripping with sweat, said, just as Bandito fell to the canvas in front of the three heroes, and struck a pose with a rose in his mouth.
“And I helped!”
“You…didn’t really do anything,” Lazuli started, before El Amante covered his mouth.
“Ah, let him have his moment,” the man in the purple mask said.
With the adoration of the crowd secured, the three heroes raised each others hands in triumph and bowed. El Amante and Temo found it right to lift Laz up on their shoulders and walk him out of the aisle.
"It feels good to be the prince," he said, winking towards the audience.
The End
