Most Dangerous Game: The Pre-Game Show

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Kyle's strange download (mentioned here) is sick enough that he goes to Garrison, to report it as what he thinks might be a crime.



Kyle came almost skidding to a halt outside Garrison's door, and rapped on it loudly. "Garrison? Mr. Kane? I know we're not totally supposed to call you that but this is kind of an official thing and hello? Are you in there?" He was out of breath, and obviously upset by something - enough that despite the rapid-fire pattern of his words, he sounded deadly serious.

Kane tossed his remote down on the bed beside him. Always when he had the hockey on. Three points out of eighth place, one goal down but Mats on the powerplay, and what happens? A student crisis. He knew he should have taken the apartment in the city. "Yeah, come on in."

Kyle opened the door, closed it right behind him and leaned against the wall. "Okay, so, you know the stupid fight thing I did last year and please don't make me explain because I got my ass kicked by Toad and it was totally not something I want to go back and talk about, um, ever? Okay, so ... " He looked at the slightly blank look on Garrison's face and shook his head. "Short sentences. Right. Okay. I went to download a UFC Pay-per-view off a bittorrent website, and I got some freaky jungle hunt thing, only they're hunting, you know, people, and I know the guy that got hunted."

"I swear you people all need to relearn a language. Any language." Garrison levered himself to the side of the bed, swinging his legs over to sit up. "Let's try this again. You went to download one of those fighting shows from a site, and instead you got what?"

"Hey. I have A's and B's in English. Totally." Kyle protested automatically. "I got.. dude, I don't know what I got. It was like, in some jungle or something and some guy totally speared another guy to death." He ran a hand through his hair. "And I would totally not be freaking right now, except that the guy who got speared was a guy I knew from the fighting thing."

"From the mutant fighting club thing." Kane repeated, thinking it over. "Alright, lets go take a look. You got a name for this guy, or is his just Random Face in the Crowd number 6 or something?"

"Rishi. I never caught his last name or anything though." Kyle explained. "But it's hard to not recognize a guy with bright freakin' red skin. I mean, -dude-." He shook his head slowly. "I mean, maybe it's some special effects thing, but... I dunno. It wasn't any movie I'd heard of or anything.."

"Could be special effects, could be some YouTube gimmick, could even be a real show in production that your buddy signed up for because 'killing' a mutant seems to grab a larger audience." Kane walked over to his desk and pointed at the computer. "Bring it up."

Kyle sheepishly brought up the media player, with a few mutters about 'bit torrent' and 'not technically legal', and then loaded the file, which depsite being labeled "UFC 67: ALL OR NOTHING", did not show the UFC Octagon. The camera panned on a lush jungle, and then closed in on the back of a young man with bright red skin, running wildly through the underbrush.

The mutant ducked and jinked through the jungle, constantly shooting looks over his shoulder, as if it was the camera chasing him. He broke out into a small clearing, and the shot pulled back, showing him backing away from the nets that had been strung across the trees around the perimeter, blocking him inside it. He turned to face the camera, and his entire body shuddered violently as a spear extended into the frame, and drove through the juncture of his ribs and out through his back.

He grabbed on to the spear, but the barbed points had torn a wet hole, shredding his lungs and nicking his heart. The man coughed once, and then collapsed forward as a torrent of blood poured from his now slack mouth. There was a moment of laughter before the camera shut off and the file ended.

"Well that's all kinds of sick."

Kyle had his hand over his eyes, and turned off the monitor without looking. The noises had been bad enough. "Yeah. I'm thinking not so much with the special effects there." He shrugged, and uncovered his face. "There's too much, you know, jungle noise in the background. Movies don't use that much. It sounds different."

"Well, we're not going to make that call yet, but I think you're probably right." Garrison dug out a pen and took a pad of paper from the desk. "What you need to do is tell me everything you know about this Rishi. Where does he live, what's his full name? Any detail that we can use to identify who he is and where he should be. If he's gone missing, especially if someone has filed a report, I can send that clip into the Bureau's tech lab. They'll analyze it and determine whether it merits further investigation or if it's just a particularly good hoax."

"Somewhere in New York, I'd guess? Dude, all I know is that the guy can't grapple for crap, and he's bright red." Kyle said, just a touch frustrated. ".. I know a guy who might know though. I think I still have Mike's email address somewhere around here.." A few minutes of digging through his address book produced an email address, which he read off to Garrison.

Kane took the address and put it into his pocket. "Alright, I'm going to head into the office. You don't go anywhere. I'll try and get you on the phone once I get there. It'll be easier than taking you in and trying to explain things."