by me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
I thought about ignoring the text message, but I kind of felt like watching Warbell get punched in the face, so I turned on channel 7 even though I was in the middle of the scene where Captain Scrapstache manages to subdue the Bermuda triceratops by skewering one peg leg on each of the dinosaur’s horns. The fight between Raul “Punchface” Panfester and Warbell hadn’t started yet, and instead they had some commentators chattering on about the historical significance of pitting the king of the dinosaurs against the current king of the boxers. Another commentator began a rundown of all the other fights Punchface had won, and how if you added up all the men who he’d KO’d, they would be collectively about the same weight as Warbell. Then they had a journalist begin working the crowd, interviewing the weirdest people they could find.
“So basically what you’re saying is that Punchface just has to fight as if he has to KO everyone he has ever KO’d all together in one night because this dinosaur is the same size as everyone he has ever fought before combined?” asked some guy with a sharp mustache and absolutely no hair otherwise.
“If anyone has an uppercut that can down a dragon, it’s Punchface,” said another man with a massive tattoo of Raul Panfester scrawled across his left pectoral.
Punchface himself came to make his pre-fight boasts, and he blathered on and on, making the usual puns.
“I’mma gonna make this beast extinct!”
“I hear dinosaurs have a brain the size of a walnut. I never KO’d a walnut before, but I am going to take a crack at it.”
And etc.
Eventually Warbell came on the screen, but he didn’t seem interested in smack talk. He just smiled.
“After the fight, we will have a special question and answer period with me,” he said. “I want to talk about some of the things I have been investigating because I need your help—the help of everyone watching this program. There is a lot to talk about.”
I sat forward in my seat. The investigations he has been working on? Did Warbell mean about the “disappearing death virus”?
A pretty girl was asking Warbell how he felt about the fight, but I wanted to yell at her to ask about the virus. I got a text from Colander.
“What do you think he is going to talk about?”
I quickly texted back.
“I am sure it’s more than just a couple fossilized dinosaur droppings this time.”
The staff were preparing the ring for the fight, and there was a mini-documentary playing about the creation of Warbell’s specially designed boxing gloves, how they had to make artificial thumbs, and the process of training Warbell in how to use them. There were some really ridiculous shots of Warbell throwing awkward jabs at a punching bag outfitted with Punchface’s ugly mug, but I couldn’t concentrate on the fight anymore.
I was so agitated that I went to make three bags of popcorn just so I could distract myself by eating too much until we got to the interview.