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
She could be anywhere—streaming through the hot arterial streets of New Delhi; blanked out in a hotel room in Memphis; dead-alive on the operating table in Chiba City; under the television sky of the Sprawl. That it is Suvudu Stadium—whatever, wherever it is—and not a sweatbox basement in Camden Town or a blood-warm back alley in Bangkok, means nothing to Molly Millions.
Because it is the same everywhere—outside, the white noise, raw-edged and patternless, of human voices, human presences; inside, only the silicon-smooth silence of the blades tensing beneath her burgundy nails.
And the crowd is there and not there, too. Even those physically present are dim and dispersed, floating in the Matrix like spirits in the Aether, watching through flipcams, burbling into the datastream. The rest of the audience is an absent presence, an invisible, unblinking Argos watching the fight through omnipresent screen eyes.
Only Gollum, on his knees in the mud, so frightened he cannot breathe, is completely present, body and soul. Only he feels and sees and senses everything keenly, the heat of the sun on his back; the fetid stench of the crowd’s anticipation; the endless emptiness of her black jacket. Because he knows he is facing Death in a form even more fearsome than the Crack of Doom: a beautiful woman in black leather and mirrored eyes that reflect his terrified face back at him.
And when he looks up at the crowd, he sees a million eyes, each as pitiless as the Eye of Sauron: They do not care whether he lives or dies. They only want to see blood.
So when Gollum cries out, “Please, please don’t kill us…We loves you always, we promises…” the sound is a shock.
It hurts. Not only because it is a high-pitched shriek. It is small and fragile and cracked with tears. The crowd gasps as one.
He turns to face the audience. “Don’t let her hurt me. We are small and loving and sweet.”
He bats his eyelashes; his eyes are rheumy and gummy. He smiles to reveal six teeth, wet with slime. “We don’t wants to die. We have been so good!” He falls to the ground, exposing a doughy, distended, all-too-vulnerable tummy. “please…please…please…”
The crowd puts down their phones and their cameras; it is both impossible to look away, and painful to watch. They aren’t going to get a thrilling fight, with zero-gravity leaps, bullet-time kills, blasts of gorgeous magic; this will just be a quick, banal, back-alley murder.
It is all too real.
Gollum is actually crawling now, and has his arms wrapped around Molly’s black leather boots. “You are as pretty as Galadriel…” he weeps. “As pretty as my Precious…please…please…”
And now the audience, in the stadium, in the comments thread, has fallen silent, waiting for Molly’s reaction. She has been perfectly still, perfectly silent, the mirrorshade eyes revealing nothing.
Revealing to no one but Molly that she is crying, that the tears, with their bitter, unfamiliar tang, are streaming into her mouth. Revealing to no one the images flashing in her mind behind the shades—the faces of everyone else she has ever killed. Everything she has ever done to survive. Everything that kept her alive in the Sprawl.
They only see her retract the blades. And take out the Flechette pistol from the nylon holster, and quickly, efficiently, with a single shot, put the beast out of its misery.
And then spit out her tears onto the bloodstained ground.
Predicted Winner: Molly Millions
NOTE: THIS MATCH ENDS ON THURSDAY, MARCH 10TH, 2011, AT 5 PM, ET
Gollum is a character from the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien; Molly Millions is a character from the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson.
Gollum image courtesy of Nicolas Boyer. Molly Millions image courtesy of *deadinsane.
Tricia Pasternak contributed to this Cage Match
I was still considering this open to possibility before today, but if Gollum doesn’t have the One Ring . . . game over for him.
Sucks to be Gollum
Gollum was like a bubble team that had to play a qualifier game to get a 16th seed…
i simply dont think it is enough to kill gollum.
he should not be strong- but he did survive after tortured in mordor, escaped and then went the entire way back…
sauron is practically the DEVIL of tolkien’s world(theoretically not though) and he could not break him entiarly…
i mean, yes gollum did say some unclear messagesand gave info- but he did not care about the hobits, only about himself, the ring, and revenge maby.it only proofs his will of survival. and he did not die at the end of it all, and ESCAPED. yes gandalf had the assumption that he was a way for sauron to find the ring, but sauron dont just Release
people, i mean, he did use him, but i am sure he did nott mean to let him just go, as it turned out at the end. some how he survives everything.goes throu spiders nest eating orcs that mistook their way…
he lived to the age of 600, wile being a hunted and humiliated being wraped with trubles and despaire!
hobbits dont live that long even in good conditions. though he did have the ring…
plus hes mad.
and we could give him the ring, just to make it fare.
Gollum is dead meat. His biggest strength is that most people are aware of Lord of the Rings and not as many are familiar with Molly from the Neuromancer trilogy.
poor gollum
in lotr the character power is depended on the soul and will of the character.
the amount of “goodness” and “godness” of the characters effects the characters magical powers and endurence.
characters are subjected to one of the great powers of the world, by race or by choice, and theire loyalty grant them powers. hence the streanth of angelic gandalf and the “surviving-to-the-end-despite-odds” of frodo.
the loyalty is a key power, and the temptation of the ring is a key element of the story.
sideshiftong is fatel in such a world. we can see how sarumen could not shift sides back, since he has changed his very essence.
gollum is not loyal to eather side.
he has no accense at all. he has givenup on ultimate universal values of this world. the powers that droped him from side to side and drained him of himself sent him there. hes god is “dead” and he made himself a new one, the one ring. he had failed to find a good truth and made an empty substitute.
he is depended on this thing complitly, but its also hes adventage. he is complitly indipandent of the powers themselves. an avidant is that he changed loyalty without shanging his values: its imposible. the side is the value.
and yet,he did that.
he did not care about morgoth, he did not risk himself for him. he risk himself because of the ring, and for himself. he actually found nothing wrong with it, since he did not mean to betrail at all. he did the first existential step of breaking free of outer essence, his mistake was simply his bad choice of the new forcing one.
as i said, it also gives him a magical, fatal and practical indepandence of the general destiny of moddle earth.
this would give him a chance right until the end of the ring. and a good chance if he hold it.
Voted Gollum because I want to see him fight Jon Snow.
Seriously, if Gollum doesn’t have the One Ring, why include him at all? He’s a tough little SOB and is ruthless and adaptable, but he isn’t a direct fighter and never was. He might be able to beat Tasselhoff, Martin, or FitzChivalry, but he’s not going up against any of them, and given the random selection this year, there was less than a 10% chance that he would.
If he at least could turn invisible, then he’d have a nasty trick ready, but as it is, he’s coming into battle unarmed and unprepared.
I think you guys may underestimate Gollum. let’s look at him. He survived various tortures in Mordor to tell where the Ring was, he is obsessed with it and will do anything for it, He tricked two intelligent hobbits into a cave with a verylarge and dangerous spider in it, he outran both Gandalf AND Aragorn for a time, and he is so pitiful that it’s almost impossible for any self-respecting main character to kill.
if they fight in middle earth, golum would have an enourmous advantage, as i pointed out.
plus he ESCAPED MORDOR. oh, and in his cave, he actually ate orcs for dinner……
who said he dosent have the ring?
Shit, I was sooo late… I’d have voted for Gollum!!
the air in mordor is so poisned, if a cyborg like molly aould even step in it, she would simply rust…..