The room is small, windowless, and humming with fluorescent light. It is, generously, a laboratory. A long steel table runs down the middle, crowded with beakers of suspiciously bright liquid, a Bunsen burner, and a microscope that someone has been looking into from the wrong end. On the back wall hangs a whiteboard covered corner to corner in what are absolutely not equations.
Dirty Dragón stands at the head of the table in a white lab coat, DD embroidered on the breast pocket, a pair of safety goggles strapped over his mask. He is the very embodiment of science, or so he thinks.
Beside him, holding a clipboard and the expression of a man who has made a terrible mistake, stands Marcus. Marcus is a real chemistry student who answered an advertisement online that read „GENIUS SEEKS ASSISTANT GENIUS, CASH PAID“.
„Marcus,“ Dragón says solemnly. „Do you know why I have brought you here?“
„The ad said it was for a school project,“ Marcus responds quickly.
„It is a project. The most important project of my life,“ Dragón gestures grandly to the whiteboard. „This week, AWS signed a new competitor. A woman named Violet Vane. They say she is a scientist. They say she studies people, that she solves them like little puzzles, that she can look at a man and see all of his secrets.“
He turns, eyes burning behind the goggles. „And I cannot allow this, Marcus. Because there is only room in this sport for ONE genius. The handsome one. Me.“
Marcus looks at the whiteboard. In the center, a large circle has been labeled ME. An arrow points away from it to a smaller, sadder circle labeled HER. Beneath both, underlined three times: SCIENCE = WINNING?
„So what, uh… What exactly are we testing here?“ the young man asks.
„Two things,“ Dragón says, raising a finger. „First, I will use science to solve HER, before she can solve me. And second, and more important, I will prove that I cannot be solved. That there is nothing inside this beautiful head for her to find,“ he taps his own temple, which makes a hollow sound he does not appear to notice.
He picks up two beakers, one with bright blue liquid, the other bright green.
„Observe. To understand the mind of Dirty Dragón, we must look deep inside it,“ he says pours the blue into the green. It fizzes pleasantly. He drinks it.
„That was blue raspberry sports drink,“ Marcus says. „And the green was also a sports drink. You did not need to mix them, but it is, scientifically, fine.“
„I feel my intellect expanding,“ Dragón announces, then burps.
He returns to the whiteboard and adds a data point to a chart that measures nothing. Then he pauses, and a softer look comes over him.
„Marcus… Between two men of science… I will tell you something. This woman, Violet. She has been watching me. At the shows. She stares. She tilts her head. She finds me… fascinating,“ He sighs, a man burdened by his own appeal. „It is sad, really. Another one falls for the Dragón. They always do, Marcus. The mask drives them wild.“
„I think her profile says she stares at everybody like that. It is sort of her whole thing,“ Marcus presents a counterpoint.
„Jealousy does not suit you, Marcus,“ Dragón scoffs and crosses to a machine in the corner. It is a bathroom scale with a colander taped to the top and several wires running off the back into nowhere. He places the colander on his head with great ceremony.
„This is the Profundity Meter. It measures the hidden depths of a man. His secret pain. His tragic backstory. His true self, the one beneath the mask,“ he says and flips a switch connected to nothing at all. „Marcus. Read the result.“
Marcus looks at the scale, which reads zero, on account of nobody standing on it.
„It, uh– It says zero.“
Dragón gasps. Then he begins to laugh, delighted, throwing his arms wide.
„NOTHING! There is NOTHING inside me, Marcus! No secret pain! No hidden truth! No tragic little mystery for her to solve!“ He grabs the bewildered student by both shoulders. „Do you understand what this MEANS? I am scientifically unsolvable. I am the perfect opponent. There is no door, because there is no room behind it!“
„That is genuinely not something to be happy about, man,“ Marcus says.
„It is the happiest day of my life,“ Dragón says and rips the goggles off. „Science has spoken. The experiment is complete. You are free to go, Marcus. Take a beaker. Take two. You’ve earned it.“
He sweeps the colander off his head and marches out, lab coat billowing, leaving Marcus alone in a room full of bright liquids and a whiteboard that explains absolutely nothing.
We cut to static. When we come back, Dirty Dragón stands in a quiet, dimly room, the coat gone, his gear back on. The only evidence of the experiment is the pair of safety goggles still pushed up on top of his masked head, which he has forgotten about completely. He looks into the camera.
„Violet Vane,“ he says slowly.
„She calls herself The Quiet Catastrophe. The Blue Hour. The Ghost in the Machine. The Final Variable,“ he counts the nicknames off and nearly runs out of fingers. „That’s a lot of names. Those are not nicknames. Those are the four saddest scented candles in the store. The Blue Hour. Light one of those, run a warm bath, have yourself a good little cry.“
He chuckles, then lets it settle.
„But I will be serious for one moment, because I did my research, and you are interesting. You came to AWS to understand people. To study them. You look at a wrestler and you do not see an opponent but rather a puzzle. A little mystery to solve. You crawl inside their head, you find the fear, peel off the mask, and you show them who they really are underneath. Very clever. Very spooky, indeed. I am sure it works beautifully on all the others.“
A slow smile creeps up on his face.
„And I know you have been watching me, Violet. Do not be embarrassed. You look at me like I am the most fascinating thing you have ever seen,“ he lays a hand on his chest, touched. „I understand. This happens to me constantly. But I have to be honest with you, for your own sake. It will never work between us. My heart belongs to a championship, and also to a dog. You deserve someone who can give you his full attention. Someone less busy. Less handsome. Aim lower.“
Dragón waves the imaginary romance gently away, then leans in, and his tone changes.
„But here is the part that is really going to ruin your night, scientist. You want to solve me. You want to rip off this mask and find the real Dirty Dragón hiding underneath. The sad man. The secret pain. The tragic little boy who grew up to be a clown because some bullies flushed all his toys down the toilet or something,“ he says and shakes his head, almost kindly.
„There is nobody back there, Violet. I checked. I ran the tests. Under this mask is another mask. There is no depth, no door. You are going to spend our entire match digging for a treasure that is not buried anywhere, and while you are digging…“
He snaps his fingers.
„…I am going to roll you up, put my feet on the ropes, and go home. Because that is the difference between us, mija. You want to understand, to get something deeper and more profound. Me? I want to win. You came here for information, I came here for the three count. And only one of those ever gets your hand raised.“
He pauses.
„But before I go, let me give you a little gift. A taste of your own medicine,“ he says, and you can almost see the humor disappear from his eyes.
„Because I have been studying you too, Violet, and I think I had you solved before the bell ever rings,“ he claims and his voice drops, quiet and certain. „You spend every minute of your life solving other people. Their secrets and fears. And you have never once asked yourself the obvious question. Why? It’s not curiosity, mija… It’s armor. You turn every single person you meet into a puzzle, into a mystery on a little glass slide… So that not one of them ever gets close enough to solve YOU. You are not the scientist in the room, Violet.“
He shakes his head again.
„You are the loneliest question in it. And you have spent your whole career making very, very sure that nobody ever stays long enough to answer it.“
His smile returns, easy and cruel.
„But do not worry. I am not going to answer it either. I am just going to beat you. I am going to end your little experiment before it even begins and leave you exactly the way I found you. Curious… And alone,“ Dragón says and pulls the forgotten goggles down off his head. He throws them away.
„You came to AWS hunting for the one answer you could never find. Felicidades. You finally found it,“ he claims and turns to leave. „It’s me. The answer is that there is no answer. Buena suerte solving that one.“
The scene fades to black as Dragón walks away.