OUR DESTINY

Backstage.

Matt Mills looks slightly nervous standing next to a VERY intense Dangerous Mix. Mushi stands stoically, but David Fox paces back and forth with a bowed face,  in the small space he is allotted.

Matt Mills: I’m here with tonight’s challengers for the PRIME Tag Team Championships, the Dangerous Mix. Now, what are your thoughts going into a match that, as you have said, David, is over twenty years in the making?

The Soul Survivor stops in place and extends a hand, calling for the microphone. The tension makes Matt stall a bit, but a sharp grunt from David Fox, and a jabbing motion with his arm, jars the erstwhile interviewer to comply.

David Fox: My thoughts. Well, my thoughts are too plentiful to cram into the short time between now and when Mushi and I walk towards that ring, towards our destiny.

David slowly tilts his head up, his eyes level with the camera lens.

David Fox: When Mushigihara and I first ran that boulder down the strip in Vegas last year, a masked buffoon and his mannequin caught my eye out of everyone else there, and before long, I realized that masked buffoon was one of the greatest wrestlers I had ever seen.

A pause. David produces a weathered old notepad, and flips through the leaves before showing us a list of names long forgotten… and somewhere in that list is one of the defending tag team champions.

David Fox: For over twenty years, Jared Sykes was a name on a list of wrestlers from when my career started kicking into high gear, who I wanted to face in the ring, see if I had the skills to defeat them. Well, the years went on, and most of those names fell off the face of the earth. No farewell matches, no grand announcements, not even a shitty podcast for them to bitch about the state of the business today and grift the people who still remember them and their heydays.

He makes the faintest of chuckles.

David Fox: And certainly no chance for me to ever test my mettle against them. I don’t know how much longer I have in that ring, and when I do inevitably retire, I will do so with a lot of what-ifs and shoulda-coulda-wouldas. But tonight?

David produces a pen, and scrawls in his notepad before turning it back toward us, Jared Sykes’ name now emphasized with a circle drawn around it.

David Fox: One of those questions will be answered. I don’t know how Jared feels about this match tonight, but it means the world to me. Mushigihara and I are going to give Jared and Justine EVERYTHING in that ring tonight. And this particular loose end, this what-if? Win, lose, or draw…

David turns to his tag team partner and gives him a motivational pat on the shoulder.

David Fox: I’ll have my answer. And if we write our names down in PRIME history as the ones who dethroned the unsinkable team?

He then raises his notepad up one more time before putting it away.

David Fox: Our names will last far longer than this old thing ever will. Ready, Mushi?

The Kaiju bows his head and smirks.

Mushigihara: Ready.

David Fox: The road for me and this man was twisted, tumultuous, and chaotic. But it all leads to tonight. To us. On three, big man?

The pair silently counts together.

One.

Two.

Three.

Mushigihara and David Fox (together): OSU!!!

The Mix high-five each other, before exiting, stage-left, leaving Matt Mills to his own devices, shaking off his own tension.