Worst of all—like worse than anything I could possibly imagine, including death by super-piranha—the Brotherhood planned to sell them all without giving me a cut. Not one thin dime.
I know this because they’d foolishly left their illegal global marketing and distribution plan on one of the boxes, an informative PowerPoint titled “Selling Our Bootleg Dr Disrespect Dolls to Millions Without Paying Him One Thin Dime!”
Wait a second.
DOLLS???
DR DISRESPECT COULD NEVER BE A DOLL! HE COULD ONLY BE AN ACTION FIGURE WITH MAXIMUM VIOLENCE—WOW—MAXIMUM SPEED—WOW—AND MAXIMUM MOMENTUM—WOW!!!
Yeah. That doll thing was officially the worst part of all, and my mission was now crystal clear:
I was gonna take down the Brotherhood, baby.
* * *
The next morning I strode to the entrance of the mighty KEFVGAAIR arena of combat. The air was hot with thunder and smoke. The walls were shaking with the vibrations of thousands of screaming fans. Just Plain Usman walked up.
“By the way,” I growled. “I’m in.”
You shoulda seen the look on his face—he totally didn’t see that coming.
“You’re in!?” he whispered. “Excellent! If we attack as soon as we reach the stage, we can—”
I laughed long and hard.
“First, I’m winning KEFVGAAIR,” I said. “Then, we take out the Brotherhood.”
And so the tournament began.
Obviously such an elite level of incendiary competition can only be captured by a badass Jerry Bruckheimer–esque Rocky IV–style action MONTAGE.
I recommend listening to “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe, pretty much anything by Peter Cetera from the eighties, or the now-classic “Doc Theme Song” while you read the following bullets, for dramatic effect. Deejay, give the readers a helping hand.
Bump-tsshhh.
Bump-tsshhh-tsshhh.
“They call him Doc!”
The Two-Time enters the ring in super-intense slo-mo. So damn slow and so damn mo you can barely tell I’m moving. Except I am. Oh yeah, I am.
I gaze around the arena, taking it all in. The thousands of fans. The smoke. The flashing camera bulbs. The occasional knife fight. More smoke. My competitors. More smoke. I lower my experimental Sony prototype shades in this super-cool, super-provocative way, just enough so you can see my gleaming brown eyes—and the crowd explodes!
“KEFVGAAIR! KEFVGAAIR! KEFVGAAIR!”
I turn and stare defiantly at Lord Hannn on his shadowy throne. I point to where I think his eyes might be, then I make a throat-slashing motion across my neck. Then I point at his stupid Xbox-controller hand, and I shake my head and make the jerk-off motion, like “You’re a stupid idiot,” and also “Honestly, how do you even jerk off with that thing?”
Quick shot of Carl the Hunchback looking totally terrified on my behalf, like “Oh no he didn’t!” except not as blatantly dated as that expression.
The scoreboard lights up above us, with all the competitors’ names in fiery red neon.
Sweeping scan of the dozens of elite international opponents in their caricatures of ethnic garb—kilts and bagpipes, kimono robes, giant sombreros, berets and baguettes, khaki pants and Sperry Top-Siders. They look awkward—and bloodthirsty.
“KEFVGAAIR! KEFVGAAIR! KEFVGAAIR!”
The rounds tick off on the scoreboard—Round One… Round Two… Round Three—as my reign of dominance begins.
Shots of me pumping my fist, flashing the “I’m number one” sign, and screaming “Yayayaya!” as my competitors howl in impotent rage and spew all these hilariously stereotyped one-liners, like Kangaroo Jack screams, “Did you hear the thunder? I better run, I better take cover!” and Killer Commie Ivan shouts, “Better Red than dead! Pro gamers of the world unite!”
A quick shot of Lord Hannn pounding his Xbox-controller fist in anger. Back in my corner, Carl the Hunchback strokes his chin, like “You know what? I think the kid’s got it!”
Shot of me doing a super-badass karate kick in the air for no good reason.
“KEFVGAAIR! KEFVGAAIR! KEFVGAAIR!”
Final Round! It’s just me and Mr. Miyagi Min-Zhong. Mano a mano. Competitor versus competitor. I look him in the eye and nod. Finally a worthy opponent. This is it. The battle we’ve all been waiting for.
Yeah, I kick his ass. Like, I beat the guy in maybe five minutes, a new KEFVGAAIR record. After it’s over, I give him a firm handshake, because when it’s all said and done, he was a worthy competitor.
Then I lean in and go, “Hey, Min-Zhong, I just want you to know that I value your culture. The idea that they’d conflate a Chinese national with Mr. Miyagi is offensive and reprehensible, especially when everyone knows that Mr. Miyagi was born in Okinawa, Japan, where he was betrayed by his best friend, Sato, and then immigrated to California, where he suffered in an unjust internment camp for Japanese-Americans before bravely serving for the United States in World War II and earning the Medal of Honor. He was a patriot, a karate master, and a proud Japanese-American. He was not a cartoon and neither are you. That said, that whole thing where he tried to catch a fly with chopsticks was pretty dope.”
Then Min-Zhong goes, “Agreed.”
A furious Lord Hannn overturns a random table. It takes him a few tries with that whole missing-hand deal, but he eventually gets it.
Final epic sweeping wide shot as I turn to the massive, roaring crowd and raise my fists in the air. They scream louder than they’ve ever screamed anything in their lives:
“DOC! DOC! DOC!”
My theme song ends with this one undeniable eternal truth:
“The name isssssssssss Dr Disrespect!”
Followed by this totally awesome guitar solo by Slash from Guns N’ Roses. Then—look at that!!—Slash is actually there, in the arena, jamming in the crowd as knife fights break out all around him and everyone holds up their lighter and waves them in the air.
And I’m rocking out with my air guitar in the middle of it all, soaking in all the glory, and yeah, all right, so maybe it’s all a little over-the-top, maybe it’s all like way, way, way too much, but you know what? I’m the world fucking champ, and this is my fucking blockbuster movie montage, so I’ll make it as “too much” as I goddamn want.
“STOP! I COMMAND YOU!”
Still cloaked in shadows, sitting high on his balcony on his golden throne, Lord Hannn ruined the moment with his stupid shouting. I waved for quiet from my thousands of adoring fans.
“Listen up, Hannn,” I said, all calm and arrogant. “I dominated your ancient mysterious gaming tournament exactly like I said I would. Fair is fair, dude—hand over my winnings.”
He gestured behind him, and a flunky wheeled out this massive wooden chest and popped it open. That baby was full of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, gold bars, the works. This was like Jeff Bezos rich—before his divorce settlement.
“Fine,” he said. “But you’ll have to beat me first.”
I grinned. “Your funeral.”
The crowd—my crowd—went ballistic.
“DOC! DOC! DOC!”
“Doc!” Just Plain Usman said. “We gotta get going, man! I got the elite squad of commandos from the Other Brotherhood set to storm the compound in three minutes!”
“Call ’em off,” I said. “I destroy vicious international criminal organizations on my own time.”
I walked toward the console. Carl the Hunchback was giving me this weird look, like maybe there was a surprise plot twist coming up, but I shrugged it off.
“Let’s do this, Hannn!”
The game started. And I gotta admit, I thought Hannn’s whole “I’m gonna cut off my good right hand and replace it with a damn Xbox controller” thing was dumb as hell, but guess what?
It fucking worked!
That dude’s left hand moved like nothing I’ve ever seen. He was using one finger to jump, another finger to crouch. One finger to fire, another finger to reload. One finger to throw grenades, anoth
er finger to switch weapons, another finger to move, and another finger to zoom.
I mean, how many fingers did this motherfucker have? Looked like ten, twenty, thirty, plus maybe a dozen thumbs, all moving in a blur, hitting one button after another, jumping all over that stupid Xbox-controller implant.
And he was playing on the big dog, the original Duke controller! So his fingers had a lot of ground to cover, and they weren’t even long! They were these little fat, ugly, stumpy things. Like, not attractive fingers at all. That made it even harder to watch.
Now, everyone knows that I hate using controllers in general—tell me to use a controller instead of my mouse and keyboard on my stream and I will never speak to you ever again. Like, that’s it. Mom, you’re cut off. Dad, you’re getting nothing in the will. You’re dead to me. That’s how seriously I take that shit.
But back at the 2001 KEFVGAAIR, using that first-generation prototype advanced Xbox console, playing with a controller was the only option.
You know what?
Didn’t fucking matter.
Why? I’m glad you asked. Not really, because you should’ve known the answer. And the answer is that I’m the best. It doesn’t matter what game, what console, what computer, or what controller. I cannot and will not be beaten. It’s that simple.
So when I saw how Hannn could move, how he could work that ridiculous Xbox controller implanted on his right stump using his left hand, I didn’t sweat it at all. I mean literally not one single molecule of sweat came out of my perfectly formed pores on my stunning alabaster forehead.
I just smiled and I started moving even faster.
Because a true champion doesn’t quake at the first sign of real competition. A true warrior doesn’t tremble when he’s finally challenged. The Two-Time, Back-to-Back 1993–94 Blockbuster Video Game Champion doesn’t run from the danger at the end of that long, dark alleyway.
No, he keeps right on running. He embraces the danger. He thrives off the challenge. He grows stronger from the competition.
This was what I’d been craving back in my lair. This was what I had missed. This was the VIOLENCE, the SPEED, the MOMENTUM I had been yearning for.
Now I’d found it. And I loved it.
My reflexes got sharper. My fingers and thumbs moved faster. My killer instinct became more lethal and more instinctual. I was the claws of the hawk. I was the fangs of the cobra. I was the wolf’s cunning and the lion’s roar.
And then something weird happened. As I steadily gained the upper hand—pun 1,000 percent intended—on Hannn, thin wisps of smoke slowly started emanating from his shadowy throne, from right around where his nose would’ve been if I’d ever seen it. Blood-red sparks started flying everywhere as an electric crackling sound echoed from his balcony.
CRACKLE-ZIIIPPP-POWWWW-TWANNG!
I had to get to that balcony.
From the arena’s platform, I leapt into the stands. The rabble scrabbled. A few asked for my autograph, a couple more asked me to lay on hands.
I couldn’t blame them, but I had work to do.
I jumped over four rows, then another four, then another four, because I’m just that tall and athletic.
I reached the bottom of Hannn’s mysterious balcony and I peered upward. The stream of smoke was getting thicker, the sparks had turned into a full-on blaze, the crackling and zipping were deafening, and below us people were running and screaming for their lives.
I’ve always been great at judging distances—just one of my innumerable talents, I guess—so I could tell that there were exactly 146 inches between the floor and the edge of the balcony. That’s 12 feet and 2 inches. And that’s a really long way.
For a normal man.
Thankfully, as you probably noticed, I am not that man.
Using my razor-sharp mind, I quickly did the math. I am six masculine feet and eight strapping inches tall. My pterodactyl-like wingspan is an incredible seven feet and three inches, and my standing reach is nine feet and one inch.
That meant that to grab the edge of the balcony and lift myself up to finally confront the evil Lord Hannn, I’d need a vertical leap of three feet and one inch—or exactly thirty-seven inches.
Are you with me? I know—you didn’t think you’d get a math test in the middle of a high-intensity kick-ass action scene. But excellence is earned!
Now, I’d jumped pretty high before. Once I’d been trying to swat a mosquito in my Top Secret Command Center, and I’d jumped thirty-two inches. Then another time I was walking up some stairs, lifted up my foot, and BAM—jumped thirty-three inches, just like that.
But that was just me fucking around.
To jump a full thirty-seven inches? In a high-pressure situation, with thousands of people staring and a fire blazing and knives and throwing stars flying through the air and the fate of a global criminal organization resting on my next move—that’s a big-ass jump!
For a normal man.
I crouched down, felt that elastic stretch in my calves, the burn in my thighs, and the atomic critical mass in my glutes, and I sprang into the air…
A Short Break
Can we just stop for a moment and truly appreciate just how many inches are in thirty-seven inches?
That’s not one inch. That’s not two inches. That’s not three inches. That’s not four inches. That’s not five inches…
Well, you get the idea.
But in case you don’t, that’s also not six inches. It’s not seven inches. It’s not eight inches. It’s not nine inches. It’s not ten inches. It’s not eleven inches. It’s not twelve inches. It’s not thirteen inches. It’s not fourteen inches. It’s not fifteen inches. It’s not sixteen inches. It’s not seventeen inches. It’s not eighteen inches. Did I mention it’s not eighteen inches? Well, it’s worth repeating, because eighteen inches is still definitely not the same as thirty-seven inches.
It’s also not nineteen inches. It’s not twenty inches. It’s not twenty-one inches. It’s not twenty-two inches. It’s not twenty-three inches. It’s not twenty-four inches. It’s not twenty-five inches. It’s not twenty-six inches. It’s not twenty-seven inches. It’s not twenty-eight inches. It’s not twenty-nine inches. It’s not thirty inches. It’s not thirty-one inches. It’s not thirty-two inches. It’s not thirty-three inches. It’s not thirty-three inches. (You still there? WAKE THE FUCK UP!) It’s not thirty-four inches. It’s not thirty-five inches. It’s not thirty-six inches. It’s not—whoops, almost screwed that up.
Because it’s true: thirty-seven inches is, in fact, thirty-seven inches.
And that’s how high I was about to jump. From a standing start. Not from a run, not from a trampoline, not from a basket toss. Just a straight-up vertical leap of thirty-seven mother-effing inches.
At least, according to my estimate.
We’re Back, Baby!
Dude, I nailed it.
Grabbed the edge of the balcony, pulled myself up in the middle of that electric inferno, ran over to Hannn’s shadowy throne, and finally saw what deep down I’d known all along—Lord Hannn was nothing but an advanced prototype AI Sony Intel-Inside™ Hyper-Core i27-530000K 40-thread 11.9 GHz quantum-processor robot.
That’s right. He was a fucking computer.
A really cool one, but still. A computer.
I reached back into the shadows with my mighty hands, grabbed all Hannn’s computerized guts, and yanked them out of the wall. It was pretty fucking awesome too, because it wasn’t just wires and shit—this was like advanced stuff, like Bishop-from-Aliens stuff, so there was all this green goo spitting out from all these tubes, and all these weird humanoid groaning sounds, and I could hear Hannn going, like, “Help me! I’m melllllting! Gurgle gurgle.”
Yeah, honestly, if you ever get the chance to destroy a super-high-tech AI quasi-android, I totally recommend it.
So then of course—OF COURSE—the last thing I did was grab Hannn’s stupid robotic Xbox-controller hand and tear it off of his robotic right-arm stump. I held i
t over my head like the greatest, most badass trophy I’d ever won—except for, obviously, my Blockbuster trophies—and I turned to face the massive crowd of Brotherhood hoodlums packing the arena. I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“LISTEN UP, BROTHERHOOD! I HEREBY LIBERATE YOU FROM YOUR EVIL ROBOT OVERLORD! YOU’RE FUCKING WELCOME!”
And I threw all that funky robotic shit, with all its clouds of smoke and weird green and pink goo and blood-red flames and smoke and MORE SMOKE, down into the deep, dark pit of the arena.
Then I paused, looked around, and realized I was completely surrounded on all sides by armed-to-the-teeth evil illegal gang members. I mean, these guys had guns, they had knives, they had swords, they had chainsaws, they had flamethrowers, they had surface-to-air missiles—kinda unsafe indoors, you guys—they had everything.
And leading them all was Carl the Hunchback.
“No!” I said. “You? Carl the Hunchback?? You’re the real…”
A Short Break
Yeah, so I know this is, like, a pivotal moment and all, but have you gotten over just how impressive that thirty-seven-inch vertical leap was?
Wait—you have?
Well, whatever, man. I’m still super blown away by it. I mean, just—wow.
We’re Back, Baby!
“…leader of the Brotherhood??”
He smiled. “Didn’t see that one coming, did you?”
“Well,” I said, “I kinda did. There’s always gotta be a twist, right? So, let’s see. I’m guessing that you always knew I’d be the biggest threat to your global criminal organization, so you were like, ‘Man, scoping out the Two-Time is a mission I can trust to no one else. I better go undercover myself, so I can, like, get close and betray him when he least expects it!’ ”
“NO!” Carl the Hunchback shouted. “That was not my reasoning. I just wanted a—a change of pace!”
“Uh-huh, right,” I said. “And then I’m guessing that you hid the secret door in my room in the most obvious place possible, because you were like, ‘Let’s show Doc the truth about our evil diabolical plans to mass-produce a superhero action figure of him while calling it a doll—A DOLL!—so we can piss him off, and in his rage he will win the tournament, and then we can sell the action figure to children everywhere and make billions without giving him one thin dime.’ ”
Violence. Speed. Momentum. Page 13