The Contestants |
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The Breakdown |
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Advantages
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Advantages
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Disadvantages
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Disadvantages
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Kills
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Kills
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How we think the fight will go
(The following scenario is the brain-child of Kevin Hearne. Kevin is the author of The Iron Druid Chronicles, the first book of which, Hounded, will be released in April 2011 from Del Rey. You can check out his blog here and follow him on Twitter @kevinhearne.)
Gaius Baltar is late.
The White Witch stands alone at dawn, seething in a meadow circled by aspens and plush with annoyingly green vegetation. The snow has yet to fall here, and the cheeky plants are glistening merrily with dew instead of drooping properly with icicles. Spying movement in the branches, she turns an unfortunate squirrel to stone, because if she cannot crush some nuts, then no one else will.
A few more minutes, she thinks, and then I may proclaim Baltar a coward and advance to face a real opponent. The enemies ahead would prove formidable, true, but they would all succumb to the touch of winter; there were no great lions among the rabble. The minutes creep by like all else before her cold rage, cringing and pleading for mercy when all she wants is to see them gone.
Her patience at an end, she finally takes a breath to announce her victory, but a noise interrupts her—the noise of a man loudly cursing the ground for the outrage of soiling his shoes with mud. The man staggers into view moments later from underneath the aspens, holding a cocktail glass in his hand and wearing dark sunglasses. His tailored suit is cut to emphasize his narrow hips and grant him the illusion of shoulders. He’s spent some time slathering product into his hair, but neglected to shave, thinking perhaps a few days’ growth would lend him a rakish aspect, if not any actual advantage in combat.
“Excuse me,” he calls, in a cultured accent and with the careful pronunciation of the moderately sloshed, “but is this the right frakking place? This utter shithole of a meadow is where I’m supposed to meet my frakking doom?”
“If you be Gaius Baltar, then this is the place,” she replies.
Baltar looks around uncertainly with a polite half smile and finally exhales with sharp disdain, delivering his assessment of the makeshift arena. “Right.” He half twists his torso and waves vaguely at the direction from which he came, ice tinkling in his glass. “Would you mind if we adjourned to my suite? I’ve always wanted to die in bed.”
The White Witch’s eyes fly open in outrage and she draws herself up to her full height. “You dare to presume?!”
“What? Oh, no no no no no, Miss, um, Witch, I don’t fancy turning into a human popsicle starting with my package, thank you very much. But my suite would be infinitely more civilized. I mean, this is totally barbaric,” he says, gesturing impotently at the squishy earth, ripe with verdure. “There isn’t even a place for me to put my drink! It’s beneath my dignity. And yours, I might add, which is the stronger argument here if we’re honest with ourselves.”
The White Witch rolls her eyes and signals one of her minions forward. A minotaur lumbers out of the woods behind her and stops at her left shoulder, awaiting her command. “Take the tiny man’s drink and hold it for him until he dies,” she says.
The minotaur snorts heavily in assent and advances on Baltar, who takes a couple of uncertain steps back. The minotaur towers over him; it could crush the doctor’s skull with nothing more than its fist, but it only holds out its three-fingered hand, palm up, in front of the former President of the Colonies. Baltar delicately places his drink in the minotaur’s grasp.
“Thank you,” he says. “That’s really quite courteous of you.” The minotaur backs away and begins to return to the White Witch’s side of the field, but Baltar keeps talking. “It’s far more courtesy than I was led to expect, in fact, so I congratulate you on proving the common wisdom wrong, or proving ‘the haters’ wrong, I should say, which I’m told is the proper colloquialism these days. Do you mind if I smoke?” he says, already pulling a silver cigarette case out of his coat.
The White Witch’s eyes narrow and she raises her wand. “What is that? Is that a weapon?”
Baltar smirks at her. “Only if you’re afraid of lung cancer. No, this is a mild narcotic, you see, inhaled into the lungs and then exhaled, and it is traditional among my people to offer a man a last smoke before his death. Won’t you oblige me? I promise we’ll get to the death-dealing shortly.” He jauntily extracts a thin brown cigarette and inserts it between his lips. He returns the case to his coat pocket and then fishes a lighter out of a different one. He lights his cigarette, puffs away, and grins charmingly at the Witch as he exhales through his nose. The minotaur resumes his position behind her left shoulder and she shakes her head, contempt written plainly on her face.
“How did you ever get into this tournament?” she asks. “You are pathetic.”
Baltar’s brow crinkles in a mixture of mild surprise and pity. “Oh. Didn’t they tell you? Well, it’s no matter, I can explain quickly. You see, I used to have these visions of a stunning woman who kept telling me that God has a plan for me. For me, if you can believe it! I can assure you I didn’t believe it, at least not at first, because I thought she was nothing more than a figment of my imagination—a manifestation of megalomania, if you will—but then after untold light years and some torture and a trial and who knows frak-all how many women I shagged, this woman proved to be real after all. She was an angel, you see.”
“An angel?” The White Witch says, barely keeping the alarm out of her voice. Behind her right shoulder, unnoticed by the minotaur, a tall, leggy woman in something red and delicious appears holding a knife. Her hair is a bottled blonde, and the smirk on her face mirrors Baltar’s.
“That’s what I said,” Gaius replies, nodding. “Because it turns out that God does have a plan for me.”
The knife whispers death as it slices across the White Witch’s throat. The hot blood steams against the frost of her skin as it spills out, and she drops her wand, trying in vain to staunch the flow of her life’s energy. As it ebbs away she sees, far too late, why Baltar belongs in this tournament.
“I’m not quite sure what God’s plan is, mind you,” Baltar says, his grin wide now as the Witch falls to her knees, “but I’m quite sure it doesn’t involve me dying in this frakking pestilent meadow.” He bends at the waist and tilts his head so that the Witch can see his face clearly as her vision fades. “That’s your job, love.”
Straightening, he takes one last triumphant puff of his cigarette before flicking it away, immensely pleased with himself. “So say we all.”
The blonde woman grins ferally and glides over to Baltar, giving him a deep, passionate kiss and groping him with sensuous urgency, hooking a long, bare leg behind his calf. He closes his eyes and makes soft animal noises. When they come up for air, they realize the minotaur is still standing there, motionless, behind the body of the White Witch.
“Right,” Baltar says. “I guess you’ll be holding that drink for me a bit longer, then.”
Predicted Winner: Gaius Baltar
NOTE: THIS MATCH ENDS ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, AT 3:00 PM, ET
The White Witch is a character from The Chronicles of Narnia; Gaius Baltar is a character from Battlestar Galactica
White Witch image courtesy of BBC Pictures. Gaius Baltar image courtesy of BSkyB and NBC Universal Television.
White Witch image courtesy of BBC Pictures. Gaius Baltar image courtesy of BSkyB and NBC Universal Television.
