How we think the fight will go

Vargul eyed the creature standing across the arena. It was quite formidable, he decided, despite its painfully primitive get up. The armor, the hair, the mask–all a bit grandiose compared to the necromancer’s long plain robes.

The hotel where the Suvudu Cage Match Committee had him staying had a healthy video selection available for rent, so Ashnazai had prepared himself by watching both Predator and Predator 2. It amused him to see how many gadgets the men of this realm had created to avoid essential, daily tasks (like hunting), all with the seemingly simple purpose of allowing people to have leisure time to sit in front of a television set and watch people do things…like hunting. He did, however, find that he had grown fond of a crisp and salty invention called simply “chips” that he’d obtained from a vendor in the lobby for some coins. The experience of eating these crumbly treats in bed and simultaneously watching the videos was almost pleasurable.

Shaking his head at the mysterious culture of this realm, Ashnazai turned his attention back to the creature a few paces away.

This “predator,” he knew, considered himself to be some kind of honorable warrior. He had never been a successful hunter himself, but everyone knew that when one encounters a giant threatening creature the best thing to do was to remain perfectly still. The creature wouldn’t strike unless Ashnazai proved himself to be a threat. He was also going to need every drop of his strength to animate the corpses he had hidden around the arena. Thanks to the movies he’d watched in preparation for today’s fight, he knew the creature was deeply crippled by the fact that it could only identify prey by the body heat of a living person. As long as he kept it focused on his own body heat, the dra’gorgos could take the creature by surprise.

As the Predator eyed him, dark smoke gathered around the necromancer, twirling about him before slithering off towards the stashed bodies.

The Predator remained still, watching for the slightest move from his enemy to provoke the fight. Meanwhile, the bodies Ashnazai had laid in a perimeter around the arena rose in eerie synchronization. Their bloodless faces slack, limbs stiff, they crept up behind the predator, grasping various weapons that Ashnazai had managed to pilfer from the Suvudu Cage Match Training Room.

Ashnazai smirked at the beauty of his simple plan. “You brute,” he muttered, concentrating on keeping the dra’gorgos intact, “Your vanity is honor, one I am all too happy to exploit. Do you remember your friend….Gary Busey?”

The dra’gorgos attacked. To the Predator, it looked like the air around the arena had simply begun to shimmer as the cold bodies came into his field of vision. The gigantic yawning mouth of Gary Busey was unmistakable—even as an amorphous green shadow.

Busey’s corpse delivered a crippling stab to the creature’s abdomen, toothy jaw gaping in a grotesque grimace. Writhing in pain, the Predator turned just in time to see the wraithlike figure of Danny Glover drive an axe through his arm. Glover’s leg contorted and then snapped out, kicking the arm across the arena and taking with it the Predator’s self-destruct device. Even in death, this studio actor wasn’t too old for this sh#%.

Fear was a foreign emotion to the Predator’s clan, but for a moment the creature was shocked by the heat-absent figures and Busey’s gigantic craw, fixed in eternal post-mortem laughter at the Predator’s epic oversight.

The predator let out a blood curdling war-cry as the corpses he half-recognized from another life hacked him to bits—the worst part being that he was defeated not by the likes of Jesse Ventura or Carl Weathers, but those from that wretched second film…

Ashnazai was only satisfied when the predator’s body looked more like a smashed glow stick, seeping the ground with neon green blood. He smiled and relaxed. The black smoke curled out of the nostrils, ears, and eye sockets of his corpse minions, dissipating into the night air. They crumbled, safely dead again, on top of the Predator’s glowing mess of a body.

He was looking forward to a long night of rest to gather his strength back. The magic needed to animate the dead was rather draining.

Perhaps he’d check to see if the hotel had any Harry Potter or “The Office” DVDs…

Predicted Winner: Vargul Ashnazai