Villains. That was the kind of person that they sent to a prison. Not the heroes, not the good guys - unless, of course, they were in masks, and you were in the Marvel Universe. There was something ironic about vigilantes being put to justice due to public outcry because a suburban town experienced more destruction than usual. But then again, that was a fictional universe. So were all the other stories of heroes that he'd read. And so he had to sit and watch as the bad guys won when they should be falling, and to see true evil flourish when it should have been extinguished.

Now, he was going to be headed to a place where the worst of the worst had lived for years, incarcerated there because they were seen as the worst that society had to offer. The people that had been there had been seen as undeserving of even the slightest bit of human companionship. They had been considered to be beyond the privilege of socialization. On the other hand, Al Capone had been given quite a few creature comforts - they'd even recreated the conditions of his cell for tours. Still, most of the residents at the prison had not been given such consideration. They had been seen as scum, and so they were treated as subhumans who should be forced to repent for their crimes.

Most did not find penance. Most, in fact, found something closer to insanity. And so the plan to save the souls of criminals failed, instead condemning people to hallucinations, psychopathy, and a mental state even worse than when they entered.

This was the place where they would all do battle. This was the place where dozens of men would go in, with the simple intent of brutalizing one another. This was the plan that the WWA had for years - to send wrestlers in to some of the scariest, largest places imaginable, and have them fight for the right to challenge for one of the titles. The prize had varied from year to year, but it was always the same concept - to the winner, goes the spoils. Just so, the plan did have a few flaws to it.

One was that the prison was so vast that there would be footage of people just walking around, with some chances where there would be no action anywhere in the prison. Just white noise, without anybody encountering one another. Eastern State Penitentiary may have been a contained environment, but it was still so expansive that a person could get lost if they weren't careful. After all, it had housed hundreds of men, and somehow made it so that none of them could interact, at least directly. To do that would pretty much guarantee that somebody could lose himself, lose his direction, lose his place.

The second was the inherent dangers of fighting in a building that was left in a state of disrepair. A wall might not be able to take a direct impact, and could crumble as somebody fell in to it. A door or gate could fall apart due to years of rust and corrosion. Somebody could fall from a balcony on to a concrete floor. That was part of the attraction, of course, but it was also part of the danger. There could be fatalities, and that meant that there could be worse than just a fight for a title shot - it could be a fight for your very life.

Finally - how can somebody know he's won? With so many opponents, and so many obstacles to reaching the end of the match, there was no guarantee that the winner would find out immediately that he's gained the victory over everybody else. Messages and cell phones and radios and head sets are all well and good, but what if the winner runs off before he hears that he's won the match? Such a difficult position for some people.

Nicholas Adams knew all of this. He knew every last detail of the match, for the simple reason that he'd fought in something like this before. He had fought and been beaten up and beaten down, and eventually lost - Every. Single. Time. The losses had each taught him something new, something different, and invariably, something that he didn't realize that he needed to learn until well after he'd learned it.

The last time a match like this happened, when Nick lost, he realized something quite different than before.

He was going to have to become a villain to win this match. And as much as he would loathe that he had done it, the sweet feel of victory after all this time would be worth it. This was why he wasn't quite the anti-hero - he wasn't going to doing very bad things for others this time. He was going to be doing them for himself. He wasn't going to be beating others for their own sake - he was going to be beating others because he wanted to defeat them. He was going to be, for lack of a better word, wicked. He almost had the urge to cackle, if only because it was what villains did when they were contemplating their next move.

Or was that evil witches?

"Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"
"What?"

Adams pulled himself from his reverie. The drive to Pennsylvania in his now fully-functioning vehicle had been full of silences, save for the music in the background, and Juan had just let it happen. Nick's random statements didn't phase him that much, but this one was just a little left of sane. The point of the statement wasn't readily available - in fact, Adams had a way of making statements sound like questions quite a bit. It was the rising lilt - but Juan wasn't confused by that. Nick had simply mumbled the line, so all Juan had actually heard was "Are... good... witch?"

"Sorry, I was just quoting The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Considering the plan that I've got once I get in to Eastern State Prison and all."
"That? I still think it's genius."
"Yeah, but it doesn't quite sit right with me."
"So... new plan?"
"No, no, don't get me wrong, I'm going to go through with it - I just don't know if I'll be able to look myself in the mirror if I win. The concept of the ends justifying the means has never quite sat right with me - well, most of the time - so doing it now is disquieting."
"Just keep thinking - US Title. US Title."
"Juan, I've got a World Title shot, provided that I defeat Greg Segier at some point in the future in a singles match. What does winning this huge contest even mean? People win title shots in regular matches all the time. This is just something to boost the revenues - especially since this is a Pay-Per-View going through another service besides the WWA's internal servers."
"This is really messing with you, isn't it?"
"Riddle me this - what do you get when you cross a Rodgers and Hammerstein song with a Transformer?"
"What?"
"Just A Cock-Eyed Optimus Prime."
Juan made a big groan, and then said, "Sorry, mang, but if joo're gonna' pull off the costume you're planning, joo have to think up better riddles - or at least better puns."
"Which is why I'm getting in my practice now. After all, villainy requires a certain joy de mal, n'est pas?"
"I speak Spanish, Nick, not French."
"And yet you knew I was speaking French. How odd."

That stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. Adams had pretty much killed it, not because he had to have the last word, but because Juan had no sensible retort.

They sat in silence as Simon & Garfunkel played in the background - "Cecilia", so the song wasn't even appropriate to the situation, in spite of the fact that the two musical artists had written a song that was. Nick started tapping the steering wheel along to the rhythm of the song. He then began humming along to it. Juan finally had something to say.

"You know, I don't think you could have pulled off any other villain besides the one you chose."
"What do you mean by that, Guevesos?"
"Well, Nick, let's face it - you're kind of goofy. Getting you to be a serious villain would be like getting a nuclear physicist to suddenly take up creative writing as a career."
"Hey, that's happened before... I think."
"You still get my point - you choose the villain that you can be, and still have as little remorse as possible. You chose the guy that even helps the heroes sometimes. So tell me this - why are you conflicted about carrying out a plan that you already admitted you're going to do anyway?"
"I just... come to that, there's no logical reason for it, is there?"

The song on the radio changed to "The Boxer" as they kept talking, once again underscoring something to which it had absolutely no relevance. Nick made a mental note to save this mix CD for when he was driving around Seattle, instead of on road trips. He almost missed Juan's response.

"What's logic got to do with it? If you were being logical about this match, you wouldn't be going in to the prison as a villain in the first place, because people are expecting you to go in as the superhero."

Nick nodded.

"Well, it cannot be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain," he said, then paused, shaking his head. "At least not this week."
"True enough. Just don't kill anybody, okay?"
Nick smiled and said, "Trust me."

The car rolled on as it continued its path towards Eastern State Penitentiary, its driver headed not toward penance, but pernicious deeds, not virtue, but victory.