[Kristopher Ryans]

 
The screen starts out black and slowly starts to fade in. We see Jason Halich, dressed in a suit, climbing up the stairs of what looks like the outside of a church. However, as we follow inside the building, it is clear that it is not a church at all, but some kind of mausoleum. There are plaques along the walls, stacked five high from floor to ceiling and each about the length of a coffin. The hallway in front of him stretches down the length of a football field, and there are several doorways leading out both sides of the building. All of the doors were open, the backside of the building leading out to the main cemetery. Jason stops at one of the plaques, but something through the door catches his eye.

”You know, I was thinking that coming here might not have been much of a good idea, but apparently I was wrong. It would appear that someone had the same idea when we did, or at least something similar.”
>He turns to the camera for the first time, and points them to look through the doorway. None of the viewers are surprised to see Kris Halich sitting in front of one of the gravestones most of the way down the aisle. We do not pick up what he is saying from this distance, but can clearly see him turn to the camera. The red haired woman operating the camera turns to Jason and shakes her head. He turns back to the camera and starts to lead them back to the plaque that he previously stopped at. He does not draw immediate attention to it though, gesturing back towards Kris.

”I should have been able to guess what he was going to want to get off of his chest before we did this whole match. I guess I doubted whether or not he was ready to talk about that part of his life. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. In the last year he has slowly allowed himself to become a normal person. By that I don’t mean grow up. In the Peter Pan sense of the phrase, that’s never going to happen for him. He’s never going to let go of that part of himself that half of you probably hate, and the rest of you love. That polarizing, harsh, hurtful sarcasm that he uses to pick at people, or make people laugh is never going to go away. He was like that long before drugs, and long before ever becoming people recognize in a crowd. ”

He laughs, shaking his head. He had tried to force Kris out of that attitude for years, and it had most likely made things worse instead of better. Kris had a way of doing the exact opposite of what Jay told him to do out of spite.

”What I mean is that, for the first time ever, he is not boxing himself off. He swore to me from the first moment he ever considered the idea of marriage, that he was never going to get married. His reasoning being that our sister was never going to get to have her own special day, so he shouldn’t get to either. He told me that he wasn’t going to have kids, because he clearly doesn’t know how to take care of himself, let alone anyone else. I have never seen him willing do a job that wasn’t wrestling related. That is, until now. He does a lot of work in rehab centers, and goes to a ton of groups to try and keep people away from stuff. He cares more about his son than I have ever seen him care about anything in his entire life. He finally fought for and got married to the only girl he ever let really get close to him, and that includes Liz Smalls. He has turned his life around, and doesn’t really carry the burden of our sister’s death anymore. It even has a little to do with the woman out there with him kind of filling in as the surrogate sister he feels like he failed. He’s allowing himself to have a real life, and form relationships with people for the first time. It’s one of the reasons that I convinced him to do this Jet City thing. I saw it happening and wanted to come along for the ride. I wanted to stay close to see all of that stuff happen at the same time that he finally came into this business and really succeeded. I wanted to be a part of that greatness, to bring this whole thing full circle.”

He takes a deep breath, and then nods his head.

”At this point in my career, I can admit a few things without feeling bad about them, or needing any pity after I say them. I have won world titles, triple crowns, and have been inducted into hall of fames, but I’m not that guy anymore. In all, I have had five different surgeries on my right knee. To say I lose a step with each year that I get older is an understatement. The reason that I stayed away for so long, is because I can honestly say it took the majority of the three years I have been out of the ring for my knee to get back to normal after what Blyss Lockhart did to me. That’s not to say that I am not every bit as talented as I have always been. It does mean that I know I am to a point where being a tag team champion is probably the only thing that I have left on the table. I know if it came down to just me having to go full speed for world class matches a half hour at a time every single week, I would be on the injured list in just a few months. I don’t have that kind of stamina anymore.”

Again, he gestures out towards the door where his brother is still sitting.

”What I do have, or better yet what Jet City has, is that kid out there that is a bottomless pit of stamina. For the shortcomings that I have, he has the counterbalance. For every imperfection that he has when the tempo of a match slows down, I have the knowhow to get us out of that situation. Our skillsets are somewhat opposite. Our personalities are somewhat opposite too. I know that you can all tell the differences between us when we are separate. I know that you can all also see how everyone around Kris gets sucked into his little sphere and start to show some of his qualities. I think that’s what makes Jet City entertaining to watch. At the end of the day, we don’t get along all the time. We don’t pretend to, but we can come together and lay both a verbal and physical beating on anyone on this roster. You’re not going to hear Jet City ranting about breaking bones or ending people. If you want that you can turn into half of the SCW roster and hear that. We give people something a little different. Maybe that’s what Mark and Christian saw in us.”

He looks down again, and chuckles lightly to himself. He had not ever denied that he enjoyed everything that Jet City had done as a group. Everyone on Twitter has seen him brag about how it has been the best time he has ever shared with his brother.

”He chose to talk about this match from out there for only one reason that I can think of that makes any sense. The person that has always kind of steered his life is out there. For a long time he refused to have any happiness that she couldn’t have because he blamed himself. Now, he is determined to be happy enough for both of them. I’m here for the same reason.”

He steps out of the way, and nods to the plaque behind him that we can now see reads EQH. There was no full name, no dates, and no short phrase of who the person was. Those familiar with Jason’s history know pretty well who it is though.

”Kris had an epiphany about a year ago, and decided that he was going to stop running. If I am honest, I am jealous that it happened to him before it happened to me. Granted, he carried the weight about for two decades. For me it has only been a few years. I quit this business once before in order to go try and be normal. I got engaged, had a kid, but we all know that I don’t have either of the above anymore. We have heard the story dragged out on Twitter. We have seen it mentioned in countless promos by tasteless people desperate to win a title, but lacking any real talent to win one. I have heard my daughter’s name brought up so many times by people in attempt to dig at me, that I’m desensitized. She’s the reason that I am out touring with SCW past what I know I should be. That’s why you don’t see me settling down with someone and leading a quiet life. I tried all of the things that Kris is starting to build for himself, and I failed, so here I am.”

He brings his eyes back up to the lens of the camera, but his face fails to show any emotion at all, including the signature smirk that rarely ever leaves his face.

”I’m hiding from life under the guise of wanting to go out with a bang. It’s not without its perks though. I mean, this whole Jet City experience has been the most fun I have had professionally. I would throw away every world title I have ever held if it meant I could go back in time a few years and get this whole thing started back then. I am starting to fear that I have stayed past my welcome as an individual though, at least on a regular basis. The strange thing is, Kris and I have talked about this match. In fact, Christian, Mark, and I have talked about this match before. The day that we got booked in the tag team title match, I went to the two of them and told them that before I left, I wanted to have this match. Regardless of anything else that happened, I wanted to make this happen before I signed off forever. I would have preferred it to come at the very end, or at least after we dropped the titles, but now is as good a time as any.”

The smirk returns to his face, confidence starting to come back to him.

”Two things about this match have become painfully obvious to me. The first of them is the way to win. The second, the way to lose. Kris is the kind of guy that could never shake his tendency to fly over fight. If you put him in a situation where he has to stand toe to toe with you in the middle of the ring, he doesn’t know what to do. More than half of his game is focused on misdirection, and catching people sleeping. The stamina that I talked about early is what gets him out of trouble as quickly as it can land him in it. For my brother it is all about high risk and high reward. The way for me to win this match is to be the one that makes the next to last mistake. While Kris’ style of offense opens him up to making a lot of mistakes, my style is the opposite. The less I do that can be turned against me, the better off I am going to be. The more that I can prevent Kris from flying around the ring, the longer I’m going to be able to hold my own against him.”

He shrugs, trying to laugh it off but knowing that with his slower pace, he is going to end up being a sitting duck a handful of times in this match.

”The way to lose, is to try and treat this match like something that I can plan for. My brother is not like any opponent that I have faced. In fact, if you just look at it from a statistical point of view, he has beaten me more times than anyone else in the world. There are so many people that I have faced more than once, but none of them have fared as well as Kris has. Every time that I thought I had him figured out, he pulls something new out of his bag of tricks. No matter how many times we spar together, it never follows the same format. Our fights never stick to the same script. Kris has no style, because he has no training. The same impulsiveness that he displays in life, he displays in that ring. Being in a ring with him is about trying to walk a tightrope with really bad vertigo. You’re constantly off balance and just trying to keep your feet under you, because if you don’t, you’re done for.”

He laughs at the thought.

”I thought that by the time this match happened, I would be okay with either way that it went down. I was plotting this out to be the last match that I was ever a part of. Jet City being a success story has prevented that from becoming a reality. I am going to be around for a lot longer, because we aren’t letting go of those titles any time soon. If you doubt that, ask The Unholy Alliance or The Elder Bitches. The important thing is, I would have been okay losing if it was my last match. It would be a good way of turning over the spotlight to my brother and stepping out of the picture. I’m not stepping out though, so I’m not about to let him walk away a winner without giving it my best, hardest shot. I’m not ready to look him in the eye and have to admit that he is better than I am. I am not ready to be the brother that has to be in the other’s shadow yet. I have held onto this spotlight since he first fell into drugs. There’ll be a day that comes where he takes it from me, and that day is fast approaching, but it is not Sunday. Sunday is just going to be another in a long line of fights.”

He turns and looks back at the plaque on the wall again, touching the tips of his fingers to it before starting to step away.

”People have been waiting to buy a front row ticket to this fight for years, so I’m not about to let people down. Lots of people on Twitter have been adamant about the fact that because of the things Kris says and does, that they want me to maim him. There are others that want him to put me out of their misery. For all of those reasons, and tons I can’t even start to list, this is going to me the match that all of you want to tune in and see. If you do, you’re going to see two people venting more than twenty years of frustration, and refusing to let the other have any kind of bragging rights. In a normal match, a person will gloat until they move on with their life. When you fight family, you have to hear about the outcome until one of the two of you die. Neither of us want to lose, but more importantly neither of us wants the other to win. ”

He smiles widely, flashing his teeth in doing so, and starts to walk away from the camera. He turns, to face it while walking backwards.

”Do yourselves a favor, and don’t miss this regardless of which one of us you want to see walk away a winner. Rarely do you get a match that means so much to the two people in the ring without a championship on the line. If Christian and Mark were a little smarter, they would have put this thing on a pay per view, and pre-sold the movie rights. It’s what I would have done if I were them...”

He holds his arms out to his sides, and shrugs at their missed opportunity.

”I’ll see you all Saturday. None of you will be disappointed.”

He turns on his heel, headed out of the building, and the feed fades to black.