[Kristopher Ryans]

 6:51am
Honolulu, Hawaii
3 March 2017



The video starts with a camera fixed on Jason Halich. He is sitting in a lawn chair, and the only thing that can be seen around him in the frame is sand. Though we are outside, it is just before dawn, so the low level of light make it hard to read his face. He is not directly facing the camera though, looking above and left of it like the real view the opposite direction.

”Jet City is flying solo this week in a lot more ways than I realized until just now. It started out with just this match. Yeah, two SCW Tag Champions are going to be teaming together, but the person standing on my side of the ring isn’t Kris, so I have a hard time finding a way to get motivated without him out there. I guess that kind of sounds sappy, or even a little disturbing, but anyone that has been around him knows that doing shows is a lot more fun with him than it is by yourself.”

He shrugs, forcing a smile onto his face that can be seen as the sun rises just high enough to finally splash a little light where he is sitting.

”Then his daughter born on my daughter’s birthday. A lot of you can see why that is a little rough for me. We kind of touched on that subject once or twice before now. To push it a little further, he names her after our sister, a second big emotional hole in our lives. Of course, as happy as I am for him, that meant that not only was I going to be flying solo in this match, I was flying solo all together. When that thought came to me, I handed him back his daughter, drove to the airport, hopped on a plane, and found myself here not even twenty-four hours later.”

He laughs, but even people that are mostly deaf can hear how forced it sounds.

”Nothing like a sporadic vacation to a beach to take stock of your life on a random... Thursday… or whatever today is… Friday at this point. Who knows what it will be by the time I actually get around to putting it up. I guess I’m just taking stock of my life and not liking the fact that I see everyone else moving forward, while I stand in the same place.”

He shakes his head, not happy with the way that he worded the thought, and then physically waving it away.

”Talking about Kris as a lead in with that was a terrible segway. That’s not at all what I mean. He can take all of those personal steps for himself without me getting too bent out of shape. The similarities with dates and names is a little weird to get used to, but not upsetting. The rebuilding of all of the bridges he has burned is great for him. Personally, I am perfectly content with being the unmarried older guy that’s not thirsting over every slut on Twitter. The standing still that I’m talking about is professionally. Last time I made a real run of anything, I went to the very top of a company in my first match, and then stayed there until someone literally ended my career for a few years. I came to SCW and history repeated itself. I find myself at the very top of my division from my very first match, and they can’t seem to find anyone to take the championship away from me. This time I even have Kris there to mess everything up, and still cannot seem to lose. The match that Rage technically won? I never did a damn thing to actually get disqualified so clearly someone paid a referee to do them a favor.”

The laugh that follows the words is much more genuine than the first.

”I can’t seem to lose, and the people running this company will tell you at every turn that we aren’t actually expected to do much of anything. Every time we retain it seems everyone is surprised. Every time Jet City does one of these promos, we get all kinds of comments about how we are biting off more than we can chew. Yet, we told you The Elder Bitches would fail. They did. We said The Unholy Alliance was good on paper but a serious mismatch in reality, and nobody believed we had a chance in either match that they failed to beat us in. We literally made fun of how little Dying Breed cared about their limp-wristed shot at the titles, and then proved those words as gospel truth when the bell rang. Their response to every team being a lack of a real challenge is to just throw a bunch of them at us at once. Maybe that is another idea that looks good on paper, but it’s also one that’s going to fail to take the titles away from Jet City. You’re going to hear us say that a lot in the coming weeks, but for some reason everyone will be surprised when it happens.”

He shakes his head and looks away from the horizon line and actually into the camera for the first time.

”But… again… that’s not really the point that I am trying to make. Jet City will handle what Jet City has to handle, when Jet City has to handle it. This week is about something a little different. Last time I did this, I plateaued and it took injury to force me out of my position. I remember thinking that I wish I had done so much more. Why did I stop at the top of one division, or one company? If I was so dominant, why did I not attempt to spread myself across a couple companies and become an even bigger name than I was. The longer I had to think about it, the more I realized that people these days still remember companies that I was part of, and even one that I owned. I’m still a pretty well known guy without really taking advantage when I was the top of my game. The question I have been faced with is, am I okay with just being a tag team champion, or do I want something more for myself. Kris has Blast From The Past coming up, and if he wins that, and then a singles title, Jet City is done for pretty much on the spot. That’s not really a whole lot different from getting injured. The rug still gets pulled out from under your feet in both situations. There are no double champions in SCW.”

He shrugs, holding his arms out to his sides, palms up towards the brightening sky.

”With everyone around me thinking about their future, escaping away to a warm play and a nice beach seemed to be the perfect place to think about mine. What is going to happen if Kris is ready to move on? Before losing that match, I thought that him wanting to strike out on his own might be a while. I thought that I would have a little more time. Maybe that I would be more ready to leave. As it is, this whole ride could be coming to an end and I don’t know whether to recruit a new tag team partner, go after some singles gold, or maybe look to different companies with new challenges, or old grudges. I’ve been straight about being here because this company means the world to Kris. I have a lot of respect for everyone here, but I still kind of feel like an outsider. I know how people like Chelsea Payne feel when they talk about being on the outside of Sin City and looking in, and she seems to be another one of those people that is branching out without a lot of people actually noticing it.”

He winks at the camera, and turns his attention to the horizon line again. The sun raises high enough for him to have to squint when he is looking that direction. More of his surroundings start to be visible, like the stairway leading up from the beach behind him.

”Where does that leave us, huh? I’m flying totally solo on what is supposed to be a two man operation. Just in general, Jet City is possibly coming up on big changes depending on what happens in the coming months. I have a bunch of options, but am almost paralyzed into inaction. Typically it is a good thing to be able to see the big picture instead of just focusing on the week to week. If you have a plan, and a direction, your goals are easier to meet. Jet City had a plan when we first started doing this a year ago. We haven’t lost a match together since that time. This week it seems to be a curse that I can’t unsee the big picture. I can’t stop looking at the big things that are ahead. Even looking forward to facing just about every team in the tag team division in the same night is attention getting. It makes it easy to overlook this week, and this odd little tag match. It is really less of a tag match and more of two singles matches racing to see who can finish first.”

He leans forward in his chair, and brings his feet down to the sand on either side of the chair. The strangeness of it made it more interesting to him.

”Think about it, inside the match, if it were a straight tag match, we would have The Elders vs The Elders. However, Jon is really only in the ring with me. He’s not going to have anything to do with Alana just like I’m not going to have anything to do with Uriella. Aside from taking turns competing, this isn’t a whole lot like a real tag match. As such, I really don’t have to care about my partner. Jet City and the Female Elders get along well enough. But, for me, Jet City and those Elder Bitches are just not going to ever be cool. For me, this match is just as much Jet City vs Elders Bitches as it is JHalc vs Jon Dough. The problem with that is, we already know the result to Jet City vs anybody on this roster goes, let alone the sorry asses we took the titles from to start our amazing reign. So you can bank that this match is not going to go any differently. If I were Alana, I would be pushing myself real hard this week, because if she can’t get the job done against Uriella before I get bored, then I’m going to wreck a member of The Elders right in front of her so that I can jet out of the arena and hope things get back to normal next week.”

He pushes himself up from the chair and crosses the short distance to the camera, picking it up, and spinning it around to see the sunrise across the water.

”If any of you think you have something important to tell me in the next few days, I want you to think about if you would want to be bothered by anybody when this was the view you were trying to enjoy. And then, regardless of what you think, you can just fuck right off anyways. Jon, I might be flying solo, but after a few more days like this, I’m going to be more than ready to get this over quickly so that I can come back to looking at this, instead of you standing across a ring from me.”

The screen starts to slowly fade to black, and then cuts off entirely.