All-Star: The Interrogation
Nate Carter gasped for lungfuls of precious oxygen as the burlap sack was ripped unceremoniously from his head. His face was beaten and swollen in places as if the blood boiling beneath it was desperately trying to force its way out. His lip, bulging in a near-identical manner, trickled with blood as crimson red as it was chillingly black. His left eye had been beaten and had opted to turn a deep purple in response to whatever unknown act of aggression had been inflicted on it. The pain from the various bruises littering his exposed torso went some ways to dulling the pain of his slightly broken nose and the loose tooth hanging from his upper jaw by a thread swung back and forth with all the whimsy of a child on a swing, a contrast to the scene that greeted Nate the moment his eyes adjusted to the blinding light of the light fixture glaring down at him like eye of an angry god.
The room, dank and depressive, was sparse of all but burly-looking gentlemen in ill-fitting suits, many of them fighting a losing battle with male-pattern baldness, a war in which they had apparently called in cavalry in the form of aggressive looking scars and tattoos which screamed ‘I could kick your ass, buddy’. Nate wasn’t inclined to disagree as his instincts got the better of the thumping pain at the base of his skull and he counted five of these glowering man-beasts.
Next, Nate tried to get as far away from the most uncomfortable chair in the world as possible, already knowing what the result of his actions would be before trying them. Tied down, Nate thought to himself, beaten up, trapped in a room of enough testosterone to impregnate a T-Rex. Pick your first words carefully, Nate. They could be your last. Frowning as best as he could with his swollen lip, Nate cleared his throat with the authority of a man not naked and tied to a chair getting steadily more uncomfortable by the second and said: “So, are you guys just gonna pile on or does someone want to spoon me first?”
His dry wit was met with boyish sneers and chortles from four of the five angry bald men. The one standing upfront who Nate had guessed to be the leader, presuming rank within this organisation of burly biker-lumberjacks depended both on how bald you were and by how long you could glare at someone without blinking, refrained from joining in the shared amusement of his underlings and, drawing back a fist with the word ‘HARD’ tattooed in surprisingly delicate letters on each of his four hairy knuckles, punched Nate right in his jaw.
“Ow!” Nate yelled, plaintively. “Ow! Ow!”
"Hurts, doesn't it?" One of the men said, tauntingly.
"Uh, Ow?!" Nate responded, thinking the answer to be obvious.
“You think you’re a real funny guy, eh?” the leader said in a high-pitched Canadian accent.
"Wait,” Nate forced out from the inner wise-ass without the common sense to know when to call it quits at his core. “Wait, wait, wait. That’s your voice? That’s your accent? Is this seriously what you’re going for here? Evil, balding, angry, balding, burly, balding Canadian biker-lumberjacks?”
One of the biker-lumberjacks felt his head self-consciously, convincing himself that inner beauty was the true decider of one’s self-worth. Another awkwardly spoke up in a voice which instantly reminded Nate of a customer service representative. “I’m from Missouri, actually…”
One of the men, the shortest of the giant biker-lumberjacks, which is to say he was about the size of a hatchback car, turned to Missouri-Man in surprise. “I didn’t know you were from Missouri.” Hatchback said in a tone which most people would reserve for stumbling upon the Holy Grail on the way to get a snack from the fridge.
“Quiet!” Red Leader said in righteous fury. Nate had decided to nickname him Red Leader due to the readiness of his rough face to turn into a tomato at the slightest indication of an external irritant. Satisfied that Missouri-Man and Hatchback were no longer making small-talk, he turned back to Nate, who had busied himself with a fly swooping and swerving around his head. “We know who you are, Agent Nate Carter.”
Nate gave a quick glimpse at his nude body before peering back up at Red Leader. “Well yeah, I’d say you know more about me than most men do by this point.” He grumbled, distracting himself from his aching wounds.
“I must say, I’m disappointed.” Red Leader continued, a smug grin spreading across his face and contorting it into what Nate could only describe as a smashed open eggplant. “The great Nate Carter.” He chewed on the name as one would a particularly sour candy, spitting it out with seething contempt. “A master spy. An assassin. Downed in a dirty alleyway by three men wearing cargo pants in the summer.”
“I know,” Nate said, shrugging in mock surprise. “I was just as shocked as you are.”
“I think cargo pants can be all-purpose legwear…” Fab-Fun, a hulking man in fabulously functional cargo pants, muttered, stretching out a leg.
“Okay, since you guys are probably going to torture and/or kill me in a few minutes,” Nate interjected, shifting in his seat to scratch an annoying itch on his upper thigh and taking the opportunity to get an extensive look at the light fixture above him. “Could I ask you a few questions?”
Red Leader, his face as scarlet as a burning flare, slammed his fist into a collapsible table at his side, collapsing it in an entirely different way. “We will be asking the questions here, Carter!” As if to reinforce his point, projectile spittle flew eagerly from his mouth and landed on Nate’s face, tactically bombarding it like a liquid air-strike fuelled by hot air and one-too-many beers.
“That’s not a very diplomatic system, hoss.” Nate said, recoiling in a futile attempt to dodge the man’s putrid spit. “I already know about your little people-trafficking game, here. I took on three of your men halfway through eating a hotdog and almost won. Least you could do is entertain me.”
Red Leader, blinking a few times in disbelief first, burst into a short, barking laughter that reminded Nate of one of those small dogs you find in handbags and tied to trees. Once he was done savouring what might just have been the first genuine laugh he had experienced since his childhood as a large bald baby, he drew a poorly made handgun and pointed it at Nate’s forehead. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t blow you away, bud.”
“Well,” Nate said through gritted teeth. “You haven’t gloated about your master plan yet.” He looked around as if preparing to share some undisclosed piece of clandestine information before leaning forward ever so slightly and speaking in a loud whisper. “And your fly’s undone. I wasn’t gonna say anything, but come on, man, be decent.”
Red Leader turned redder than Nate had ever seen before and he was all but certain the scarlet giant was about to transform into a fire-breathing dragon of old as he drew back his fist and hit him in the jaw with a devastating haymaker which sent Nate, obnoxious chair and all, toppling backwards and to the floor.
“Try to help a guy out…” Nate slurred as his world span before him and the five men loomed over him.
“You underestimated us, Carter. You thought we were some small time operation, huh?” Red Leader said with a Malfoy-esque sneer and thinly. “I’ve been sneaking people in and out of this country for years now. My organisation goes higher up than you could even imagine, Carter. And the U.S government thinks it can stop me with a single unarmed man? One unarmed man with a stupid goddamn moustache?”
Nate muttered something under his breath, his face buried into the dirty floor.
“I think he’s saying something, boss.” The fifth man, Captain Obvious, pointed out.
Nate muttered it again, this time with a slightly louder voice. Already tired of the man, Red Leader kicked him onto his front with his foot. “You saying something, Carter?”
Nate looked up at the man and flashed an arrogant smile, revealing a gap roughly the size of a tooth and faintly bleeding. As the Red Leader raised a bushy eyebrow at the imperfect grin, Nate gave him a cheeky wink. “Not unarmed.” He said, bluntly. Drawing in a breath and turning to the still blinding light fixture dousing the room in its luminescence, he hollowed out his cheeks and puffed them back out as he spat, his now dislodged tooth flying from his mouth and hitting the light fixture, snuffing it out in a shower of sparks and falling glass.
“What the hell?!” Missouri-Man yelped.
“He killed the lights!” Captain Obvious pointed out.
“Get him!” Red Leader screeched.
As the beautiful chaos unfurled within the darkness surrounding him, Nate pushed himself, still strapped to his chair, onto his feet and closed his eyes. Don’t think, Nate, he said to himself, feel. Rushing forwards like a bullet train, he rammed himself headfirst into Fab-Fun’s stomach, eliciting a loud cry of pain and surprise followed by the sounds of a large body crumpling to the floor.
“I’ll get him!” Hatchback called out, the tell-tale clicking of a handgun being loaded resounding throughout the dark room.
“Don’t shoot in here, you dipshit!” Red Leader snapped just a second too late as Hatchback fired his handgun through the darkness. As the muzzle flare lit the room up with an all-consuming burst of sound and light, Nate saw two things: Hatchback stumbling backwards and tripping over some unseen object and Captain Obvious slamming against a wall and slumping forward with a scream as the bullet struck him in the shoulder.
“He shot me!” Captain Obvious pointed out as urgently as one would expect someone to inform others about their recent shooting.
“Where is he, dammit?!” Missouri-Man cried seconds before his question was answered by the world’s most uncomfortable chair smashing over his head. His unconscious form collided with the floor as it came up to greet him, his mouth muttering something his brain didn’t quite catch.
Two birds with one stone, Nate thought, glad to be rid of the terrible chair that had made the last twenty minutes of his life a living hell. As the frenzied shouts of Red Leader mingled incoherently with the frightened animalistic noises made by Hatchback, he took in the thrill of it all and smirked to himself. Already knowing his next move, he took the rope that once bound him to the chair of his discontent and wrapped it around his hands, creating a makeshift cord and proceeding to pull it taut around Hatchback’s beefy throat. Alarmed and just a little bit inexperienced, Hatchback fired his handgun wildly around the room, punching several holes in the metal door closing the room off from the rest of the world and hitting Red Leader in the leg and toppling the red-faced man. His grip unrelenting, Nate continued to pull the rope against Hatchback’s throat until the man’s frantic flailing lessened bit by bit and he slipped into beckoning darkness.
Checking Hatchback’s pulse to confirm that the man was, in fact, still breathing, Nate stood upright, as buck-naked as the day he was born, as light crawled its way into the room through the holes in the door and illuminated both him and Red Leader, who clutched his wounded leg in pain, his teeth gritted and his eyes beady with impotent rage.
“And by the way, my moustache is not stupid. It’s post-modern.” Nate retorted belatedly, hoping that word meant what he thought it meant.
“Boss! You’re hurt!” Captain Obvious pointed out loudly, still slumped against the wall.
Red Leader sighed, a wave of defeatism washing over him. “Shut up, Eugene.”
“Pants, pants, pants, pants…” Nate said to himself as he slid Fab-Fun’s fabulously functional pants off of his writhing form and slipped them on, turning to Red Leader once he was sure no one in the room could see his Little Dipper. “Now, where were we?”
“I’ll get out, Carter!” Red Leader growled, finding his last vestiges of defiance. “I’ll get out and I’ll find you, you rat son of a bitch! I ever see you again and you’re a dead man!”
Nate stooped down low, scooping up the burlap sack and walking over to Red Leader, smiling through his battered face and going to open the sack over Red Leader’s scarred one. “Well, I guess I’ll see you then, pal.” He remarked.
Red Leader screamed his anger and went blood red as the bag slipped over his head, engrossing him in complete darkness. “For your sake, I hope you see me first.” Nate’s disembodied voice said as the Red Leader felt a fist smash into his face, sending him free-falling into oblivion.
“…I think we lost.” Captain Obvious pointed out.
