El Mariachi

By Agustian Noor.

> "Destiny cannot contain me." - El Mariachi
>
>

## Life in New Mexico

El Mariachi was the lifeblood of a very popular algae snack shack. Thanks to his special spices, news of his establishment spread far and wide and business was booming. Unfortunately, El Mariachi was a late-comer to the shack and he still had to answer to a boss. It didn't take long until he became disillusioned with the corruption and ineffectiveness that permeated every level of the restaurant. He took his spices and left for a life of freedom in the Preservation.

The authorities who stopped him at the border told him he must fight for citizenship, the same as everyone else. However, El Mariachi is a gentle soul who prefers not to cross swords with anyone. A lovely serenade from his cursed guitar entranced the fight organizers, who agreed to waive his entry fight in leu of a few concerts at the fight venues.

El Mariachi thanked them, saying he would accept the deal only on the condition he be allowed to operate a food cart to selling buffalo meat burritos with his special spices. Waiting Room and Willie raised an eyebrow at the request but granted it.

Things were shaping up great for the spice-pusher from New Mexico. He was almost forgetting about the annoyances of his previous life: his slimy boss and the sleepless nights of playing his guitar until morning just to keep the curse within it at bay.

## Fight History

##### GOLDEN AGE: SEASON 1

These days, El Mariachi is a REGULAR fixture at the Scrapyard. If he’s not fighting, you can find him at his food cart selling burritos with special spices that delight and confuse his enemies. If the food cart is nowhere in sight, listen for the sounds of soulful, moody electric guitar droning in the hazy distance. It is he, El Mariachi, strumming the strings of his cursed guitar to keep it's strange evil at bay.

As a result of his exposure to the mysterious guitar, El Mariachi is imbued with a mysterious set of skills which he occasionally tests in the arena.

EL MARIACHI V. SUPASTANK: STANKIN' UP THE UNIVERSE

There's a strange mood in the air. Everyone can feel it. Deep in the hills surrounding the Scrapyard, black electricity chokes the fingers of El Mariachi as he plays an ungodly guitar. His face is "so concentration" as he plays, his mouth hanging open funnily because he's in the zone.

He notices a line of crows watching him. They are hypnotized. He's tired. He stops and the black electricity grows around him. It keeps growing while he rests. He notices the black growing and get determined.

He starts another song the black shrinks back into the guitar. Before long, a lone traveler appears. "Could you stop that," she demands. As a man of such grace and stature, El Mariachi can invite a challenger with his posture alone. He throws off his poncho and prepares to deal with this rude woman.

Supastank rushes forward to strike. A simple aggravated assault: an action that occurs millions of times a day on this small little angry planet. However, there has never been an aggravated assault like this. The two combatants could not know the consequences they would soon wrought to the universe...nay, two universes. For the mighty Supastank knows not that her Sword of Lies is made from Necrocite, an element which exists not in the Oakwood Universe, save in her hands.

And as for El Mariachi...for years he has been the ward of an entity which he cannot know, an entity which wields the universal properties of Oakwood with such reverence and strength that it might be considered a pivotal string in the fabric of Oakwood space-time.

When the Necrocite made contact with this entity, it created a pin-hole in space-time which pierced the dimensional veil and gave, for a brief instant, an entire host of life-forms from a long-dead universe complete access to the Oakwood time-space. Hundreds of miles away, a primitive nanoculture sailed on the interdimensional filament straight into Rachel Roy's left hand.

So powerful was this cosmological event that it was felt by all life-forms on Earth in some way or another. The full ramifications of this encounter have yet to be calculated but this is certain: in a universe that obeys Earth physics such as Oakwood, all foreign elements of supernatural or alien phenomena are a result of this temporary bleed-through from the long-dead parallel universe of Abbottville.

Dazed, the two stared at each other wondering what they had done. Then El Mariachi slapped the hell out of Supastank and took his first victory.

DER BURGERMEISTER V. EL MARIACHI: "ACH! MEIN OHREN!"

El Mariachi was angry about what happened with Stank. The cursed black energy had departed his guitar that night, leaving him both relieved and feeling once again he was just an unimportant, ordinary mortal. Quite ordinary, in fact. His guitar playing had since become a shadow of its former, hypnotic and spellbinding elegance.

He was in a cycle of suffering. Even though he’s got rid of the cursed guitar, he still felt cursed. "Like the opposite of the magic ballet slippers.  I don't need the cursed guitar to be cursed. I never did.”

Still, he had a contract with the organizers to play the fights and that was what he would do. They gave him a nice setup on the main stage and he was finding his groove just when a huge bald man gave him the finger, telling him the music was all wrong. "Serve the fights, not yourself."

Well, that upset El Mariachi properly. He was not in the mood to be ridiculed. He put his extremely normal guitar against a speaker and leapt at the bald man holding two beers like a clown.

They crashed through the barrier and fell down into the ring below, ruining Kuma V. Yuuku by overtaking it with their own dispute. Though El Mariachi was able to land a few sound blows on this hulking brute, he ultimately got his butt kicked.

What's worse: he was not asked to return to play live music for the fights again. He was granted his food cart but the organizers put it in a bad location. Things were looking down for El Mariachi, the only main he knew who'd become more cursed by removing a curse.

##### GOLDEN AGE: SEASON 3

KUMA V. EL MARIACHI: DIGGING YOUR OWN HOLE

Weeks later, things getting better. His spices had proved worthy in the Preservation and his buffalo-meat burritos were gaining a good following. El Mariachi's guitar practice had led him to good places as well, at least emotionally if not artistically.

So it was quite a shock during one fight night when the organizers appeared, demanding he fight for his citizenship in the Preservation since he'd been unable to fulfill his musical contract.

Protesting that he'd fought two fights already, the organizers reminded him that those were unscheduled, unofficial matches and they didn't count. Left with no options, El Mariachi acquiesced.

Prior to the fight, however, his anger about the situation rose and he spent some of his savings on a bottle of liquor, which he drank quite quickly. What happened the rest of that night has no solid fixed place in his memory. The fragments he can recall include serving a burrito to a young woman wearing a bear jacket before getting punched repeatedly. There were people yelling as he was stumbling all over the place.

The next day, he woke to learn he was semi-famous, "the burrito salesman" and "the first fighter to accidentally defeat his opponent." He asked to review the fight footage but was told the cameras had all stopped working that night. After this, his food cart was given a prime location near the Scrapyard and he never received any harassment from the organizers again. This world is a strange place indeed.

## Trivia

El Mariachi was conceptualized by John Sgroi. He is an innate Defense type. He's "the guy who does the theme songs for the fighters."