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REEL TWO

“They say that there’s a broken light for every heart on Broadway…

They say that life’s a game and then they take the board away.

They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story…

Then leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret.”

-- V

V For Vendetta, “This Vicious Cabaret” Prelude, (written by Alan Moore)

FADE IN:

5. INT. SUSPIRIA’S LAIR – LATER

Habagat has flown straight into a trap!

Lured to his arch-enemy’s lair (a labyrinth miles beneath the Pasig river), Habagat thought to rescue his first love and high school sweetheart, LILLIAN LOPEZ from the supervillain’s clutches, but instead, the stalwart hero finds himself-- quite literally-- in that self-same dastardly grip.

He should have suspected something awry, given the ease with which he’d managed to gain entry to Suspiria’s lair (merely one death ray and a handful of atomic zombies), but Habagat’s thoughts were solely on Lillian and her safety.

And when he’d been challenged to a duel by the villain, he’d accepted (as he always did).

But the tide of battle immediately seemed to turn against the hero.

His enemy seemed stronger than he normally was, more powerful. Faster, as well, his punches coming in-- and connecting-- more often, while Habagat seemed slower, sluggish even, less coordinated.

Then Suspiria tore the hero’s icon from his chest, something no other villain had ever managed to do before. With the icon-- forged of some indestructible metal of mystic origin-- came Habagat’s cape, and the upper golden-yellow section of his suit, leaving his bracers on his forearms.

Now, unable even to catch a decent breath, Habagat is being held aloft in a steely single-handed clutch around his neck, his red boots dangling inches off the steel floor, his bruised upper torso visible.

His chiseled pectoral muscles are barely rising and falling, his rock-hard abdomen, with its bricks, obliques, and serratus, looking as if it’s been carved by an obsessive-compulsive Michelangelo; this, the ideal at the core of the marble slab, liberated from all that would sully its perfection.

In vain, the hero struggles desperately to escape, to draw breath. His hands grasp Suspiria’s wrist and forearm, trying to break the grip, but to no avail.

Habagat feels himself weakening, as if his powers are somehow draining away. And it isn’t like the last time. His enemy isn’t stealing them away, isn’t duplicating them; it’s almost like his powers are just evaporating.

Suspiria, Master of Evil and Gloating, sneers. And gloats, of course.

“Nararamdaman mo na, `no? You’re getting weak, my friend. That’s because the air you’re breathing is laced with criptonatz!”

Habagat’s blood runs cold.

The legendary criptonatz. A rare mineral that is supposed to be the hero’s bane. Exposure to it would supposedly sap him of his strength and superpowers, and eventually, kill him!

But he thought criptonatz was a myth! He’s never encountered it before today. Where did Suspiria find it?!

Habagat feels himself losing consciousness, his arms going limp. Soon, these muscular weapons of mass destruction (with the power to move mountains and juggle planets) simply hang there, useless.

Baring his teeth in a snarl, Suspiria hurls Habagat across the room, the weakened hero smashing into the titanium wall ten feet away, his still sturdy body leaving a sizeable dent in the thick metal.

Head spinning, pounding, Habagat tries to stand, but he keeps on slumping back down to the floor, worse than a toddler learning to crawl. He can’t seem to think straight, his tired, aching muscles seemingly deaf to his mental commands.

His vision begins to blur, to grey at the edges, a blanket of gauze unfurling, confounding sight. And he feels sweat trickling down his brow, his chest. (He only ever sweats under extremely supreme exertion, say, on the level of planet pushing after having battled hordes of brutish alien juggernauts for an entire year, non-stop.)

He hears his heart pounding against his rib cage, frantic, labored.

Dimly, he realizes he does not remember how he got to this chamber, which, the corridors he turned down, the path he took. His naturally acute memory, his total recall, has eroded, failing him as his powers have. Had he the strength to fly (or even walk), he still would not have the capability to find his way out of this labyrinth, to find his way back to the surface, to daylight, and the city he so loves.

Habagat wonders if this is his final fate: to suffer and die here, stripped of his strength and his dignity, to breathe his last in these twisting bowels of steel and stone, in the vast, echoing chambers of his enemy’s cold, dead heart.

He moans softly, his sweat-slicked face reflected back to him, distorted, by the steel floor.

He does not recognize himself at all.

He sees the large black boots of Suspiria clomp towards him, sees the caped figure, white and grey in his costume, the livid, jagged slash of red across his torso, the Sig rune,[1] which seems to waver, to undulate, in the hero’s blurred, pained vision, suggesting something sinister, serpentine.

Habagat sees his nemesis, and can do absolutely nothing to defend himself.

Suspiria stands over the fallen hero, staring at his impossibly muscled back.

So much power wasted on such a weak fool. On someone who actually cared for lesser beings, for those who came nowhere near his perfection. What did Lalaine see in him?

Couldn’t she see through him?

And now he had his Lillian. Dear, sweet Lillian, who would suffer just as much as he would.

Suspiria’s upper lip curls in disdain.

“Heh,” he snorts, “nakita ko `to sa TV,” he says, as he bends his arm, then plummets, smashing his elbow-- the full weight of his body behind it-- into Habagat’s lower back.

Habagat grunts, teeth gritted, as he arches his back, head thrown back, the veins in his neck looking fit to burst. In his weakened state, the pain is a sharp, savage torment that he can neither ignore, nor escape.

“Umuubra din pala siya, `no?” the villain observes as he leisurely gets to his feet, eyeing the agonized hero. “Baka hindi lahat ng nasa WWE, fake.”

“Ano sa tingin mo?” Suspiria asks, as he snickers, bending down to lift Habagat by a fistful of the hero’s hair.

Suspiria lifts the weakened champion to his knees, then holds him there, supporting all of his considerable weight, for Habagat cannot even keep himself erect.

“Katapusan mo na, Habagat,” Suspiria proclaims. “You’ll never leave this place alive.”

Slowly, the villain closes his right hand into a fist, then rams it into Habagat’s face. Blood spurts from the hero’s split lip, and Suspiria finally releases his hair, allowing Habagat to fall, face first, unconscious, onto the cold, hard floor.

Suspiria snorts derisively, then steps over the body of his enemy, taking the insensate hero by an ankle, and dragging him across the floor, towards the chamber doors, which slide open, then shut behind him.

1 The Sig rune, like all runes, holds great power. Co-opted by the Third Reich (as was the swastika), a twin-Sig rune was used as an emblem by the Schutzstaffel, the dreaded SS.

The Sig rune is the rune of wholeness and completion. Profound insight is also associated with it. One divination handbook notes (in relation to the Sig rune), “Be confident without being arrogant, be true without being superior,” two pieces of advice Suspiria has obviously blatantly ignored. (Apparently, the Nazis didn’t get to read that particular handbook either.) [back]

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