This is Coldworld. Here, the Cold War never ends. It goes through many phases...but it never really ends.


The season is finally here. Every state and county in Coldworld is organizing a fair. And in this day and age...the fair sometimes means gladiators.

Up and down the highways, party buses drive. The bus drivers might not be flirting with disaster...but the parties aboard sure are. Don't mind them if they cause the drivers to wreck the buses.

Along with them, another driver drives a limo. He bears alarming resemblance to Hugh Jackman...

On the side of the highway, a car's been stopped. It's a blue sedan. Behind it, a cop car sits parked, with its roof lights flashing.

The traffic on this highway just won't give this debating pair a break. So, the patrolman orders the driver to drive uphill, just up the road.

They do, and she parks behind him. Out here, she finishes checking his license and registration.

In the blue sedan, Kurt Wagner gets impatient. He isn't usually...but getting pulled over by cops, of course, is hardly his favorite thing to do.

His scalp sure itches. He scratches his head a lot. He really hates this. Wanda did, too...back when he dated her.

The cop is a she-cop. Kurt's just relieved that she's a fellow peasant. It is NEVER cool to be a rich kid on Coldworld.

At last, she gives Kurt back his license and registration. She doesn't seem too disturbed that he looks like a blue devil...which Kurt appreciates. More than once, Kurt's considered joining the Morlocks...

Alas, she does make a disgusted look, when she looks back at him. Crap, Kurt things, I've blown my chances with her...if they ever existed...

"Boy? Or Jungen, whatever you prefer... You need a haircut!"

At this, Kurt moans. He's almost tempted to teleport to a barber. Alas, he waits until the she-cop moves on.

Once she has, he looks around. This looks like a spot where he can stay parked for a while. So, he makes this easy for himself. In a puff of blue smoke, he teleports away to a barber he's heard of...if not used before.

Ray Stevens, he's going to hate this...


Out here, another barber lives and works alone. His estate looks very much like a gladiator's ludus. Funny; there are never any gladiators that train here...

In a cellar downstairs, Mr. Seven, the barber, loses control, as he punches a bag incessantly. He sure is rough on it. But then, he's a mutant with a superhuman condition...and not to mention superhuman senses, which is why he wears gloves when he punches a bag.

On a pedestal in the hallway, a stone bust sits on a pedestal. It's of En Dwi Gast/the Grandmaster. He bears alarming resemblance to Jeff Goldblum...

Mr. Seven has got quite the trophy closet. It's unclear as to whether they're all his, or just relics from better-known, and not to mention better-recorded, victories...

Outside, the barber chair sits in the center of an arena, atop a dais. The arena resembles a small gladiator arena. Alas, the bleachers are usually empty. But then, this is just a barber chair...

One puff of blue smoke later, Kurt teleports into the chair. He's startled, when the chair spontaneously cuffs his wrists and ankles to itself.

From beneath the chair's seat, a special leg grows, and accommodates for Kurt's tail. Alas, Kurt's devil-tail is soon cuffed, too...

"Ah fuck," Kurt says, in his usual German accent. "I hope he doesn't plan to cut that off!"

Behind Kurt, the portcullis within a vomitorium rises. From out of it, Mr. Seven runs, clutching a pair of single-edged swords...forged in Mojoworld. In all of his own grandeur, he pretends he has an audience, and continually does gymnastics and bows for him, as he runs out into the arena to meet his latest challenge.

Making Kurt feel insecure, Mr. Seven does all of the barber work with his swords. He's got some great swordsmanship... Even so, at any point, Kurt expects him to make a mistake, and cut a major artery in his head...

As Mr. Seven works, he talks. He talks of how much he loves to play games, and of the great games he's seen played. These players made much honor, he tells Kurt. Nobody could ever quite make history like the fairest and most considerate gamers who've ever lived; gamers, he's sure, that would surely make an academy's worth of Black Desert players look like amateurs, for sure...

Alas, he starts talking about LESS honorable players; specifically ones that cheat. He ESPECIALLY hates teleporting mutants. They NEVER make fair players. They just...teleport all over the arena and attack their opponents from behind without mercy...and without any code of honor worth proving on TV. The gaming industry, he says, would be SO much better for everyone of all teleporting mutants just died on the spot.

Kurt, of course, feels even more nervous than before. Not only is he having his hair cut by a very fast-moving swordsman, but the swordsman in question hates teleporting mutants...and Kurt, of course, IS a teleporting mutant...

At some point, Mr. Seven has to take a breather. And he does. When he does, he dries himself off with a towel nearby, and looks down upon his client.

"So," he asks Kurt, "what do you do for a living?"

Kurt's got absolutely no excuse for being ashamed of who he is. Not only is he not a gamer, but he's a good mutant. He's just a simple little Vienna Catholic mutant. He teleports to his little stomping grounds, and protects his little homefolk from danger...as often as that doesn't happen in Vienna. Sure happens more at the X-Mansion, though; more than anyone could imagine. OTOH, there are a lot of folks on Coldworld, even, who'd rather treat mutants like rich kids than like fellow peasants...

Kurt can't tell the truth...so he improvises. "I'm a fireman," he says. "I fly in helicopters, spraying down liters of water on forest fires. We work all night, until they're put out. The helicopters have to refuel many times. Alas, we can't leave the woods on fire...as much as Hank Williams would've loved to set them that way. Hell, for all we ever know, Hank Williams III is the one who sets all of them. STILL cannot believe the Williamses would do as much as they do to over-replace their pill-popping patriarch."