[Kristopher Ryans]

 The scene opens close up on Kristopher Halich’s face. We can see that his knees are pulled up to his chest, and he is leaning against something, but we cannot really tell what. From the glare in his eyes, and the natural light though, he is clearly sitting somewhere outdoors. From his attire, jeans and a plain red t-shirt show it must be somewhere warm.

“For as long as I can remember, there has always been one person there for me every time that things went wrong. At the point that everyone else leaves, there is always one person there to pick up the pieces. I know that it’s not just me that sees it that way either, because The Unholy Alliance hit on it pretty hard both times we faced them. Jason is always there to clean up my messes. He is always looking out for me. He sacrificed so many things in his life to make sure that I was taken care of, and it didn’t start after he started competing and blew up to be the person you all know today. He dropped out of school to get a job and pay for things so that I wouldn’t have to do the same thing. He took beatings for me so that I wouldn’t have to. He has paid for me to go to rehab so many times that I’ve honestly lost count. I could sit here and list all of the things that he has done for me, and all of the disasters he has helped me to avoid, but I don’t think it would hold your attention for the hours that it would take. Instead, I can sum it up in one statement. I would not be breathing right now if not for Jason Halich.”

It was a somewhat different side of Kris than SCW viewers have ever gotten to see. There is no confident taunting in his every statement.

“It is weird that we are going to be across the ring from one another, because in the four years that I have been doing this, it has never happened. We have gotten offers, and opportunities, but something always got in the way. There have been moments when we were at each other’s throats and a match like this would have gotten bloody, and violent, but we passed up doing it. There have been other moments where we have fought in hotel rooms, driveways, living rooms, and bars, but never in front of a crowd of more than a few strangers or a handful of friends. I have lost my fair share, and I have won my fair share. No two fights were perfectly alike. This is different though.”

The whole situation clearly bother him more than he was willing to let on. The camera starts to back off of him, showing the stone texture of whatever he is leaning against.

“We didn’t join SCW to go head-to-head. We joined this company in order to build one another up, not tear each other down. Anyone that knows us knows that we have issues. More than being brothers, there is an aspect of a father-son relationship here that we never really shed any light on. We didn’t have great parents. To tell you the truth, we didn’t even have good parents. One of them was a miserable son of a bitch that never contributed any positive experiences to our lives. The other was more or less an absentee from my first memory in this world. The only person I ever had to look up to, to take care of me, that ever gave a shit about me, is my brother. Our struggles that a lot of people see as a sibling rivalry are actually more the kind of arguments that a parent has with a rebelling teenager. It is because he was more of parent than a brother that the two of us have never been, and will probably never be, friends. Everyone has an experience where their parents had an idea for how they should live their life, and because of that, there is friction.”

On his last word, he brings his knuckles together, dragging them across each other. He shakes his head, looking away from the camera, his eyes narrowing on something. There is a light chuckle that escapes his mouth and he loses his train of thought. With a second shake of his head he comes back to the camera, sighing.

“When people talk negatively about me, the biggest thing that they hit on is my history of drug abuse. I have fans come up to me, and they always ask the same thing: Why is it that none of it seems to bother you? See, I out my drug history as a way to control the narrative against me. I put it out there for everyone to grab onto it and use against me, because if that is what they choose to blast me about, I can take it. There are so many other things that I don’t want out there, because putting them out there means that it can be used against me. There are some things that I just didn’t think that I could handle being turned into a punchline. In this business, divorces, abortions, dead children, heinous violent acts, and so many more things can be turned into cheap jokes made to get into a person’s head all to win a match. In that kind of world, I would rather people just talk about the fact that I got into drugs at a young age, and for the life of me I have never been able to stay off of them for more than a year at a time without a setback. I can handle that because those choices are mine, and that means the consequences are on me alone.”

He puts a hand on the ground, and pushes himself forward, brushing off his pants as he gets to his feet. The camera stays focused enough on him to not show his surroundings. However, as he stands, we now see the daylight sky in the background behind him.

“One of those things that I don’t talk about is the fact that there aren’t two members of Jet City, but three. Before Jason and I signed a contract, we had to go and ask permission to do so. We made promises to someone. His was that he wouldn’t let me be a danger to myself anymore. Typically that meant that I wasn’t going to be allowed to be on the road. My history with not being supervised is sketchy, at best, for reasons we have already covered. It made sense that he would make that promise. Mine was a little different. I made the promise that I wasn’t going to stay in this business at the expense of the only relationship that has survived all of my various fuck ups. I wasn’t going to keep doing this if it meant pushing my brother away.”

The camera finally backs off of him far enough to show that where he is standing is a cemetery.

“So, before we showed up at the SCW Halloween show dressed as siamese twins, we came here. Where is here exactly? This is the place that it all leads back to. This is where Jet City was born. This is the place that the third member of our team never gets to leave.”

There are headstones surrounding where he now stands, but the fans cannot catch any of the text on them before the camera focuses on the one he was leaning on.

Lindsay Marie Halich
July 11, 1991 - September 25, 1993

The camera comes back up to Kris, who is looking down at the ground instead of at the camera. His hands were buried in his pocket and the anxiety of the topic had him shifting lightly back and forth on his feet.

“My sister was only two years old when she fell, broke her neck, and never got a chance to do anything that she deserved to be able to do in her life. As far as parents went, I already told you the kind of people that they were. One bolted, and I wish she took the other with her when she did. Neither could accept responsibility that two kids, that weren’t even old enough to take care of themselves, should have never been left on their own to watch over a toddler. That blame got passed onto us, and I have carried it around without saying anything about it publicly for my entire career. That blame broke me in ways that are very public. It didn’t break Jason though. If anything, fighting back against it made him stronger. It made him a better parent than either of the ones that we actually had. It made him protective of the one person that he had left that meant anything at all to him. It meant that no matter how badly, or how many times I fucked up, he wasn’t ever going to give up on me because he learned how much it hurt to lose a sibling at the bright young age of seven years old.”

He manages to look back up at the camera, but only because the questions, and accusations that he had been met with for weeks should have been answered in that one story.

“If any of you have ever wondered how two people that grew up in the same house could be so different, then maybe that helps explain it. If any of you, like the Unholy Alliance, have wondered how many more times I have to fuck up before he writes me off, now you know. What I have come to accept in the last few weeks is that there is no limit. There’s no threshold that I can push it to where he leaves. I cannot be written off in his mind. I have spent more than two decades trying to push him away, because I didn’t want anyone to get close enough to me so that it was painful when they left. I have tried to shove him out of my life dozens of times because I didn’t want him to miss me when I was gone, or waste one second worrying about my well being if I disappeared. I have tried everything that I could to avoid being a good person, friend, brother, or even son. None of it has worked. I’m stuck with him.”

He laughs, amused, but cleared not thrilled with the idea.

“So, those of you that were thinking that a match like this is going to be the end of Jet City, now know just how wrong you are. The fact remains that nothing can end Jet City. There’s never going to be a time that either of us gives up on the other, even if it means that we have to stand across the ring from one another and beat the other into submission. At the end of the day, this is not our first fight, and it is far from out last. The only difference between this one and any of the rest of them, is that you all get to sit back and enjoy this one with refreshments you bought from Samantha Marlowe at the concession stand.”

Again, he has to stop as he is unable to prevent himself from laughing lightly. He points at the camera, and winks, hoping on some level that she was watching. This voice was returning to the more jovial, sarcastic tone the fans were used to.

“Just because it’s not going to signal the end of Jet City, doesn’t mean that this match doesn’t serve a purpose. Any of you that paid attention to Jason pretending to be a Nobody a couple weeks ago knows that there is something very real on the line here. Being part of this business and wrestling around the world was my baby. He nurtured it while I wasn’t in a position to do so, and kept it breathing until I was able to get myself right enough to do so. However, in doing so, he found something that he loves doing, and that he was good at. Jason has been inducted into a Hall Of Fame. He has won awards. He has won championships that I have only ever dreamed of holding. On paper, this match isn’t even close. On one hand you have a highly documented superstar from several different companies. On the other hand, you have a junkie that has been moderately successful in exactly one of the five companies that have paid him to wrestle.”

He holds up his arms to his sides, shrugging in a very animated fashion and shaking his head.

“It’s not even close if you look at the stat line. At the same time, I see people on social media saying that they don’t know who to support, let alone who they think will actually walk away the winner. To me, that shows that all of you understand that what this match looks like on paper is going to be very different from the reality of it. My brother and I have two very different styles. He is calculated, and technical. He likes to break people down in order to beat them, and really only uses his speed as a last resort. He has training that I never got. Then you have me, who is more of a human wrecking ball where speed is the best thing that I have going for me. It is the first option, all the way through to the last option. If I am going to win, then I am going to have to stay on my feet and hope that my stamina lasts longer than his does.”

Finally getting into being focused on the match itself, he seems to hit his stride. The words flow much more fluidly, and naturally. The level of comfortability in his body language grew exponentially as it becomes more business related.

“I can’t tell any of you that I am confident that I am going to win this match. I honestly have no idea how it is going to play out. It is better that way, because like I said, we have fought more times than either of us can count and it has been a different story every single time. You can’t plan to fight someone that you have known since the moment that you were born. You can’t strategize to beat someone that knows every single thing that you have in your arsenal. The only thing that you can do is show up, throw everything, including the kitchen sink at him, and hope that when the dust settles that you are the one having your hand raised.”

He starts to walk up to the camera, again closing the frame almost solely around him. He crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“As far as any message that I have for my brother, there’s really only one thing to say. The two of us have made careers out of using anything and everything available to us to win a match. There has never been a rule that we would not bend or break in order to gain an advantage that could end with a win. That’s not going to be the case for me this week, and I hope that it is not the case for you. I am going to make certain that everything that I do is squeaky clean, because the only way that I want to beat you in front of a crowd like the one we will have Sunday is because I was just better. I don’t want to be more lucky. I don’t want to be the one that got away with the last trick. I don’t want to be the one walking away and talking about a cheap win. I want to beat you the right way, because I want you to really know that my time in your shadow is truly over. I want to beat you because I am better than you, even if only for one night in my life. That’s what I am bringing to Climax Control. Win or lose, we only do this one time. After Sunday night we will know which of us really belongs in the spotlight. Then we go back to beating up other people on the roster.”

He offers a smile to the camera, the first since the feed first started, and walks out of the frame. The camera again falls down to the granite headstone he was leaning against before fading to black.