VALE TUDO

Cotard: whatever strength i display is not my own, it is solely my mother's, i am her vessel, i don't matter, i don't exist without her, people become brighter when they die, they are never that way while alive, they are dull when living, but upon death, the people you should have known, should have been close to, radiate with the unlimited power of memory. their legend grows by the day because that's what legends do, that's all a dead legend can do.

Berte: o monk, i never respected religion before but now i surely don't. you don't know the power i've cultivated in my fist, you don't know the Stones i have.

Cotard: i have stones, too. well first of all i'm buck naked in front of you and all the villagers here, that's no small feat, especially for a religious person.

Berte: you don't have my rocks, i have THE pronounced THEE rocks, the beige ones everyone's talkin' bout these days, and my callous force slipped over them like a kid glove, the stones knew an iron hand when they saw it, i slicked the stones up with my water and made them nice and slippery with the rules. rules are meant to be broken but only by one who will put them back together again with an unbreakable bond.

Cotard: superglue cannot save you, vile villain! that was awesome, i've always wanted to say that. i have power, too, for surely i cannot tread my path alone, we are not meant to grind this hard life alone, are we? it can't be, we must come together, it's a necessity. i have the power of the people by my side...i think, i haven't exactly talked to them but i'm sure they want to be over your iron palm and reading their own palms freely.

Cotard looks past the farmers' resting faces to shiny dots here and there on the recent landscape, sparklies signaling the presence of the Stones. he doesn't have the timespace (or energy really) to run over there and snatch them but just having them there gives him a calming idea.

Cotard: let's do this, let's fight and let's make it epic, let's at least give these people a show, they're already here so why not. by the way, keep whipping me with your whip, i love it, i feel like Jesus, it's very therapeutic, i can get a lot of lodged stuff out of my brain, a lot of pent-up feelings liberate, exit, the more i feel like a martyr the more i can cover up other things about me.

Berte smiles genuinely, not an evil smile. this is so much more fun than using his ill-gotten powers to just move his workers around the field like so many checkers pieces.

Berte lines up on one side of the brown field, Cotard way on the other side of the other, they can barely hear each other, have to shout at each other to communicate. the large ranchhouse looms upfront center right at the edge of the field. the villagers notice that this will take a while and take a load off, squatting down in a half circle on Cotard and Erneste's side.

Berte: amigo you have no idea. the world has changed, it really has this time. old things are truly old now, the ancient is forgotten, actually forgotten, so forgotten it doesn't turn to dust, it merely never was. i'm evil but i'm smart, the worst combination. i've studied these Stones, i've read the same life manuals as you, i'm prepared, i was an eagle scout before that was cool, but nobody remembers scouts, no one ever will again.

Cotard: the only book i glide, i mean that guides me is the Bible capital B, not a bible like, say, of a tv show. i read the script of the ultimate tv show, Jesus's show, which never gets cancelled though admittedly at times it seems like it only plays repeats.

Berte: what?! you know not of the Stones? have you been living under a stone?

Cotard: i'm a monk, man, i don't follow the current trends, my duty is to preserve the old shit for future texting teenyboppers, like if a kid wanted a pyx for a school project, i'd question the teacher's motivation but i'd lend the pyx to the kid, if it's for educational i suppose the Vatican won't mind, just hope the kid isn't a bully or fool and desecrates the thing, so there's a pyx right now at my sanctuary, come on over if you want to borrow it, that's why i'm here, i'm like a glorified janitor bathed in the glory of Christ.

Berte: enough of your incessant babbling. are you making this up as you go along?

Cotard: yes, god yes.

Berte gives the most audacious, audacious in its boldness and also the most AUDIOcious in that it's so loud birds spring and fly away from trees, evil laugh you ever did hear. the villagers cover their ears...and mouths and eyes.

Berte: that's funny, man. it's also funny that you think you can vanquish me. i'm the one with this new power that's going around, i mean what chance have you got?

Cotard: so you're telling me there's a chance. that's all i need. hope springs eternal if there's but a kernel of hope. like these precious fields my mom left for future teenyboppers to cultivate and feed their families with, generation upon generation, forever, not to be bled to fill your coffers.

Berte: bad news, bro, this is the last generation. these are wild times, these are the times our gods come crashing back down to earth to take over earth again. we have no say. we must evolve with the power times. if you're not wearing the latest model, you are obsolete and the factory tosses you down the poop chute.

Cotard: okay if that's a sex reference i don't get it and proudly so, i'm a monk.

Cotard looks at his naked belly. it's larger than he realized. fuck i mean this is the first time he's really getting a good gander at his humongous tummy. it's huge! how did he let it get this way? when did this all happen? he must have been preoccupied with other matters to notice every time he took a shower. he was distracted with exhuming his soul from his body not his body. shame. Cotard is ashamed.

Erneste: you're not fat, my brother, it just seems that way when compared to the rest of your skinny frame, your belly alone makes you Santa Claus but actually your arms and legs are quite spindly. you're not a big man per se but you're big to us, you're the fat of our land.

Cotard hits his belly with his palm, yellow sparks spark from it. he looks across the way to Berte, he has to use his straightened fingers and palm as a visor above his eyebrows to really see across it's so far. he takes a look at his palms again, both palms, the palms the gift of his mother, and he smilecries. energy summons from his palms, more sparks, yellow light, banana yellow light, the little shards of stone in the sideline fields shine like stars.

Cotard closes his eyes and thinks back to his childhood with his mother and his tv shows. he suddenly summons up a giant whole wad of energy, combines his palms together and shoots the bulbous beam of light directly at Berte.

Cotard (exhaling breath after inhaling breath): KAMEHAMEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

direct hit. Berte is pushed and goes flying back into the one tree, hitting and uprooting it immediately. the tree branches act as a ridiculous hammock and bounce him back in place.

Berte (blue-and-yellow macaws swirl around his head): was not expecting that. i got overconfident as villains tend to do. sorry about that. i will try harder next time. what was that? i was gonna do that to you. that's my line!

Cotard: following a hunch. my mother will win because she was good, i see that now. she is on the side of the dutch angels being one herself. evil never wins, don't you watch tv?

Berte: filho, filho, i'm trying not be condescending here but you make it so easy. do YOU emphasis on YOU watch tv? the villain is never defeated after the first attack, he then either grows to be a giant or has some secret weapon up his sleeve. i'm not a man of scerets, i think secrets are lame, i'm telling you upfront i will defeat you with the power of the Stones i've accumulated. here's the catch: i have so much power running through my veins presently i can't let it all out or there'd be an epic supernova exploding in the general vicinity. i want to rule this area not be dead in this area. there's a

MOJO PIN, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

in my body. not really but picture the concept of it. i'm a human grenade being held together with tape and superglue and a frail pin which plugs the hole to whole destruction. if you remove the pin, all my mojo spills out=boom.

Cotard: okay i'm picturing this in my distracted brain.......................yeah, it's like how you have to picture Freud's concepts of the ego/id/superego, they're not really there, they don't exist the way my heart and frazzled brain do.

Berte: actually they are, really, physically, that's inscribed on the Stones. anyway, you don't know about that as you don't seem to read newspapers so whatever yeah i'm a failsafe, i'm a self-destruct, no secrets will be gleaned from me before i can gleam in the sky.

Cotard: you just let slip one of those secrets but i get it. yeah okay it's like mind vs. brain, the brain exists, the mind doesn't exist but the mind does exist. let's do this, round 2.

Berte: thank you for talking so long, it gave me a chance to get up and recover. what will you use your hand for as my putrid fam Erneste would say? will you fold your hands bequeathed to you by your mother in solemn empty prayer? hehehehehehe

Cotard: i will crumple up my sacred hands, these hands which let me do things in life, participate in things in life, and PRAY!!!!

with that, Cotard lunges with two closed fists and punches Berte on his two cheeks, facial cheeks, which stretches Berte's skin into ridiculous elongated tubes of taffy.

Berte: ridiculous!

Cotard: that is how i pray. quick, folks, while he's down, to use the video-game parlance: FINISH HIM!!!

blank faces from the villagers. they're still enjoying the show.

Cotard: come on, audience participation, i know there are some deadly forms of martial arts in Brazil, have at it, do them upon Black Berte before it's too late and he rests again.

a male villager named Jac: senior we don't know what you mean. we don't watch tv, we are slaves to this field today and forever our whole lives. if we knew martial arts we wouldn't be in this predicament in the first place, we wouldn't need you and your religion.

Cotard: one never ever needs religion, it's more of a hobby, it's fun.

a female crop picker named Glorieta: i pick the fruit. we are not fighters, we are lovers.

Jac: i'll say. i do capoeira in my dreams with you, Glori.

Cotard: come on, don't you guys watch Power Rangers? when you can't kick, punch, or dutch-angle flip with an explosion in the background, you can always pick up a shovel and fight with that.

Berte is beginning to recover again. it's never easy, is it? he's slowly landing on his feet like a Punch-Out!! boxer, quickly getting up on the 8 of 10 count, faking to the audience that he might have been down for all 10 of the count. they always get up at 8. frickin' tease.

Cotard: i need you all with me in spirit. put your power into the collective tip jar. don't tell me you have no power, everyone does, it just has to be released for the first time, a no-going-back event must motivate it, something you never thought you'd have to face and yet here it is, the thing you must face or you'll die. i'd rather die fighting for freedom than have to live in chains. what am i saying? i don't want to die, ever. but i don't want you to die, i'd be down men if you did, i want you to have and eat your pie, both pies, fight real hard for a time to get the rest of your time off. if you die that sucks cos you won't enjoy the freedom the ones who remain will. fight hard but not too hard, up to the point where there's a good chance you'll die, up to that edge, live on but not over the edge, then fall back and let others take over. see, with the group we have here, he's outnumbered. simple math.

the villagers drop their hoes and shovels and curl their fingers in prayer, eyes closed. yellow begins to spew from them and align to form a chain around Cotard's side of the field. things are growing in this agriculture patch. all of the yellow energy from the villagers' palms flow as light lines into the dirty fingernails and out-there penis of one nude monk named Cotard, who has his arms and cock raised to the heavens. bountiful unlimited energy is welling up ferociously in Cotard's cavern of a stomach, swirling around as if he ate it, the determined monk feels the weight of power and responsibility as he determinedly points his two arms across the dirt rows directly to an ailing Berte.

Berte is lookin' rather down in the dumps, his triangular goatee is now a singed isosceles.

Cotard (preparing, gathering, collecting energy in his red palms): KAME...HA...ME...

Berte (finger up): let me interrupt you if i may. what is that? what is that word? i mean i do the same thing with the Stones power, i shoot my finger guns at everything and everything, THIS GUY does (he shoots his finger guns at himself), but i don't exhale that word when i release. is this some secret jiujitsu technique i should have learned? what language are you speaking?

Cotard: PORTUGUESE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cotard lets off a massive wave of FUCKING STRINGY SPARKING ENERGY onto where Berte's heart should have been, on Berte's middle, his chest which doesn't have a potbelly, actually it does from another dutch-angle, it's his arms and legs which seem muscular but are actually just the many strings which make up the human whip that he is.

your tv screen's middle expands outward with a dot of yellow energy that turns white...outward, the explosion generates outer wings as it expands until it fills up your entire screen.

FADE TO YELLOW, THEN WHITE.

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