[21] Video/Action for Goldenrod - "I'm gonna rule this world."

[lieutenantantichrist]

[In a square in the center of Goldenrod City, a small crowd has gathered. A show is about to start.

There's a crude stage that's been freshly hammered together. Near the back, a little Snubbull is tapping in the last few nails. The platform wobbles but holds as a man climbs up it, then takes a place at a podium in the center. He's wearing a white button-up shirt and, in concession to his ambitions, a tie. He looks toward the camera.] Hey, Newt. You got that thing running?

[The camera's view nods up and down.]

All right.

[He holds his arms up for silence. Then, when no one quite pays attention, he barks,] Hey! All of you! Shut up!



[That's much more effective. When the eyes of the curious onlookers are on him, he plants his hands on the sides of the podium and clears his throat.]

All of you. Locals, people from the real world, people from the fuckin' moon. You know me. See, I've been here a long, long time. Two damn years, and I know some of you have been here longer. I was thinking about that, and you know what I realized?

[His voice gets louder and clearer as he finds his rhythm.]

I realized I'm not a fuckin' tourist. None of us are. This is our world as much as it is theirs-- and nobody is doing dick to run it.

Look around. Everybody does whatever they damn well please, and that's real nice right up until the minute some idiot starts planting bombs around. The closest thing to somebody in charge is the police, and they're a goddamn joke who give terrorists a week picking up garbage and then set them loose again. There's nobody calling the shots.

That changes today.

[His boots thud on plywood as he tramps back and forth along the stage, and his speech takes a turn toward harangue.]

When bees and sharks came crashing through people's windows, who smacked them right back out? Me. When some moron went around shooting lasers at the city, who knocked him out of the sky? Me. When a couple armies of fire and water idiots tried to wreck up the place with giant monsters, who went out to stop them? [He jerks his thumb to his chest.] Me.

[His voice is getting louder and louder. The cords stand out on his neck.]

And I'm not some jumped-up fourteen-year-old who thinks he's magic. I've been around the block in the real world. I have decades on the front lines. I haven't just lead people, I've lead them into tenements full of crackheads with shotguns. That has to mean something, even here.

Somebody around here has to get shit in order, and I'm done waiting.

[His tread takes him back to the podium. He grips the sides with his coarse-knuckled hands and leans over it to look straight into the Gear.]

I'm not asking you. I'm telling you.

From now on, I'm the head honcho around here.

[He jabs his finger at the camera.]

Stand with me or get out of my way.

Comments

[lieutenantantichrist]

This isn't for you, dumbass. You're just a symptom. You're the rash on the ass of this place that proves there's something wrong.

The only reason a scumbag like you can get away with it is because there's nobody competent sweeping up the trash. The cakewalk's over. From now on, your days are numbered.

[explosivecombat]

That's why you invoked me in all but name, I'm sure. It's obvious that what I've done has gotten to you; I don't need to be able to see you to know that. Your words tell me enough.

As for the rest of your assertion, I've invited you to stop me several times in the past. It's hardly my fault that you haven't done it yet.

[lieutenantantichrist]

How come you mad bomber types are always looking for attention? Didn't your daddy hug you enough?

[But he has a point there, and it needles Blake. He should have caught the asshole by now...but he won't fail.]

[explosivecombat]

I'm hardly the one making the blatant grab for attention here, am I? I'm just talking to you personally, in response to you giving some sort of highly-charged speech that no one is going to take kindly to unless they're an idiot, and wondering if your father didn't hug you enough - something that I think I'm well within my rights to do, given that little display of yours.

You'll make him proud one day, I'm sure.

[lieutenantantichrist]

Just wait and see. All a piece of trash like you can do is try to fuck with the shit somebody else has built up. I'm making something.

[explosivecombat]

You're incredibly narrow-minded, if you're thinking of it that way. Destruction and creation aren't mutually exclusive acts; the difference is that what I'm building is going to last for quite some time once I'm done - and with any luck, long after I'm gone.

[lieutenantantichrist]

Last? Are you kidding me? Your craters only last as long as it takes to pave them over and rebuild, dumbass. All you do is try to drag down the kind of people who really get things done.

[explosivecombat]

And if you really have "decades on the front lines", you'd know that the craters aren't what I'm referring to.

[lieutenantantichrist]

You mean scaring people? Look around you. The natives don't give a shit. People have pet whales and giant birds and chunks of metal with eyeballs. A twerp like you barely rates attention.

[explosivecombat]

You're really just proving that you aren't ready for this at all, you know - and you're doing a far better job of it than anyone else ever could.

[lieutenantantichrist]

You don't know what you're talking about. I was born ready.

And I'll take that as a compliment.