This is a guest post by a friend currently known only as Trish:
It’s the warm-up to the greatest match of the century. Nothing much, just a little show-off game to let the people of Earth know what the new toughest boxer in the galaxy is made of. He is approximately twenty feet long, and he is a worm. His mouth guards are a sight in and of themselves, and the mouth-flesh around them gleams. Taut…tough…veiny. Confident. He doesn’t need boxing gloves to be a champion. And tonight, he’s going to show the universe his personalized retort to the age-old insult “you fight like a worm.”
On one end, Mr. Tommy “The Machine” Gunn swaggers in and pounds his gloves together. From the visiting side wriggles Wormy “The World War” Too, head hanging low with dark confidence. The man behind the worm – rather, the terrifying mouse-man hybrid given new life in some offshoot Rocky sequel – is done toweling off the approximate area wherein the worm’s arms and shoulders would theoretically be.
“YYYYOU GOTTA EAT DIRT…AND CRRRRAP…DIRT!” he screeches. One hand is a thumbs-up; one holds a novelty “GET UP YOU SON OF A BITCH CAUSE MICKEY LOVES YA” mug. Wormy takes one last glance back at old Mickey, looking contemptuous as though the flea-bitten mutant isn’t worth the earth he stands on.
Cameras flash, the referee motions and the crowd roars. The pink lump that is Wormy’s head thumps wildly into Tommy’s torso, on the side, the front, the back, the side again, sweat flying, spit mingling with blood, the gloves helpless, the eyes wide with terror. The Gunn staggers backward, arms fling over the rope. Deep breathing, foggy vision. Blood drips down from his hairline to his chin, which, when you think about it, is a wound that has no logical reason to be there. Which is brilliant, actually; that worm’s strength is so profound as to defy logic.
At least Tommy’s no quitter. He asks for more, propping himself up on a limp for a second round. Bad move.
“Baaad move,” Rocky says with a sigh. He watches from the front row, next to his wife Adrian (revived in Rocky VII; still rotting here and there but that’s natural) and his old friend Apollo (revived in Rocky IX, mechanically enhanced in Rocky Balboa x Apollo Creed Clubber Lang Grudgematch 2046).
“I can’t believe you’ll actually be fighting this tyrant worm!” Adrian roars.
“Hey, man, I can do’s it. I’m the Italian Stallion, see, I’ve still got a little fight in me. I thinks some worms is got every right to be nervous,” he says, swaying a little bit. “An’ hey, if that’s what it takes to defeat the evil mutations from the big science lab, I gotta do’s is what I gotta do, badda bing badda boom, right?”
“I FEAR FOR YOUR LIFE,” bleeps Apollo (but he has little reason to do so, since Rocky achieved immortality in Creed V).
“Aw geez, guyses, you know I’ve been through worse.”
And now the mutilated corpse of Tommy Gunn goes cruising through the air, quite striking in the camera light, and lands square in Rocky’s lap. The sea of blood makes a big goop sound like “PLLLORRRRSSSHHHHHT!!” Rocky faints. The whole room shivers. They turn anxiously to the referee. He looks around slowly, first to his left, then to his right. He gets down on his knees right there in the ring, in front of Wormy. He pounds the mat and he counts to ten like an honest-to-God referee. And Gunn doesn’t move a single semi-automatic muscle.
The referee rears up and blows his whistle. “SAFE!”
Whoops and cheers rise up from the starry abyss, and applause fills the arena. Everyone’s happy but the Rocky Gang, which for a second looks dumb and sullen where it lies. As Apollo brings Rocky out of his coma using his healing eye rays, Adrian semi-gingerly rolls Gunn’s disgraced corpse onto the floor. She cries, “Oh, honey, you can’t just sleep this match away!”
“I’m not going to,” says Rocky, “but afters seeing this, I know I ain’t in no worm-fighting shape just yet.”
“But how can you get up to that worm’s level — in just one week???”
“Simple. I just train my ass off.”
“CALCULATING REQUIRED SKILL LEVEL…SUBTRACTING CURRENT PARAMETERS…INTEGRATING TIME CONSTRAINTS — ABORT! ABORT! A–” The side of Apollo’s head bursts into flames.
Rocky stands heroically and wipes the sweat from his brow. Rocky Balboa with Creed XXXXXVII’s training montage music starts. It is a remix of the original theme that is intriguingly – but still tastefully – dubstep. “Let’s Rocky roll.”
“You can’t start training nowwww!”
“Hey, babe…Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
He rips off his sensible suit, revealing his youthful pecs, which glisten as if perpetually submerged in a beautiful haze of fake movie sweat, and then he jogs out of the arena, trotting on peoples’ heads. Nobody reacts yet because they know that if they start cheering when he gets to that one building in Philadelphia, it’ll be more heartwarming.
Adrian runs a few steps in no particular direction, reaches out her hand and yells, “ROCKY NOOOOO!!”
Like an Olympic torch sending his friend off warmly, Apollo’s fire grows to encase his whole body.
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