The wages of Mayday had left scars across Coreytopia. At present, Corey was standing in the tarped off kitchen area. Shadows of blackened building materials abounded, remnants of the Molotov cocktail fire that had been just one of many lunatic highlights of the war between Alias and King Doc. An unknown man is standing beside Corey, holding a clipboard and taking a final survey of the carnage.

So what’s the damages? Corey asked like he didn’t really want to know the answer.

Well… The man scratched the back of his head. Rough estimate at this point is $75,000. But fire damage can be tricky. Sometimes you don’t know the true extent of…

Yeah. Corey sighed. It’s fine. Just do what you have to do.

The man gives Corey an appraising look, before handing him the clipboard. I just need your John Hancock.

Corey signed the bottom of the document and the man stepped away with it, leaving Corey to cut a solitary figure against the dereliction of his home. Hands on his hips, he pursed his lips before speaking aloud. I’m starting to think this was a bad idea.

A Little Later….

Corey is seen walking the perimeter of the estate. The massive crowd had left its mark on the grounds as well. Rutted grass. Strewn garbage. The remnants of tents and makeshift shelters. There was no shortage of volunteers to help with the clean up. In fact, Dolly and Thad could be seen in the distance taking part. But the efforts would take weeks. Grass would need to be reseeded. The land resculpted. In the end, Corey had gotten to see his friend Alias triumphant. A beacon in the darkness of B.O.B.’s ongoing stranglehold of the XWF. But the cost had been high.



King Doc’s visage passed through his mind's eye, a stark reminder that the costs were still being tabulated in more ways than one.

Corey approached one of the Coreytopia residents who was dispensing supplies. He received a garbage bag and a trash picker pole and set to work stabbing garbage and placing in the bag. He walked and talked as he went.

Never. Again. Corey spoke in a fashion that made a passing attempt at light heartedness. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t completely regret it, I guess. But, well… He casts a look at the damaged environs before returning his attention to the camera.

But oh, Centy, I'm not here to grouse about the after effects of a show I aided and abetted. A show that, incidentally, you lost at. No, I'm actually here to discuss your nigh telepathic insight into the mentality of one Corey Smith. Because Centurion seems to think I'm some basic bitch vanilla latte flavor of cocky young upstart. He is, of course, monumentally wrong. In fact, he is wrong to the point of me questioning his basic mental faculties. Centy, can you tie your shoes without speaking the little rhyme aloud? Can you boil water? Does Ruby have to remind you that Tab A goes into Slot B every time things get a little freaky every Wednesday at precisely at 8 pm? No that last one is ridiculous because Ruby is chaste and virginal and I refuse to consider otherwise.

Ohhhh, boy we got some ground to cover.

Corey emphatically stabs some trash and drops it in the bag.



Lux pushes a foot out into a fighting stance, readying her blade just above her head. The polished steel catches the Clean Room’s radiant brightness, temporarily blinding Iggy. he casts a hand in front of his eyes and backs away.

I think you’ll find that I’m a much more difficult memory to destroy.

Iggy recovers his vision. You’re hurting Corey. Every day he thinks about your death.

Lux scoffs. It doesn’t surprise me that the waste product of a soulless machine wouldn’t understand.

Understand what?

Understand that that’s what’s so beautiful about human relationships. How they can bring you both pain and joy. Everything that begins, ends. And most people wouldn’t trade that ride for the world. It comes with loving someone. You don’t understand love. Lux’s body tenses. You never will.

Iggy's innocent faces twists into something shockingly ugly. An admixture of rage and humiliation that strikes as sudden as lightning. Memories can end too. A blackened sword appears in Iggy’s hand.

A waif of a smile tugs at the corner of Lux’s mouth. They lunge at each other.

It’s war.



Corey stops, a small shudder wracking his frame. Should have brought a jacket… He says, airy and distracted. Then, picking up another piece of trash, he refocuses.

So Centy thinks I need more humble pie in my diet. Arrogant was a term he used. Lacking in insight was another, I believe. Yeah, humility’s a hell of a thing. Let’s talk about that some more. Let’s talk about how humbling it is to not be able to control your own body. Let’s talk about how humbling it is to almost die TWICE. Let’s talk about how humbling it is to be an addict. Let’s talk about how humbling it is to be 18 years old and strapped into adult diapers because a stroke took away your ability to even poop on your own terms.

I mean, if you ask Cent I’ve spent my whole life on cruise control, letting my talent do the talking and lapping up the nonstop fruits of my own awesomeness. Until I hit the wall, right? Well guess what? I’ve been hitting the wall my whole life you shit bird. You think I’m insulated from disappointment? From loss? From embarrassment?

Go fuck yourself.

Acting like I’m some petulant, dumbass, 20 year old NBA phenom, pissing away his new money fortune on cars and diamond studded Papa Smurf necklaces because I can’t see the bottom ever dropping out. Although, admittedly, I would invest some serious bank in watching you drop trou in the ring and build a dookie castle. Your idea, not mine! Anyway! I inherited a fortune and turned it into a second chance for people in need. I’m practicing the progressive mantra you preach, Cent! Because I know that money is transitory, that fame is fleeting, and that old age is a mother fucker. So I’m using my talent and resources for good right now.

It also just so happens that I’m really fucking good at my day job. Like, really good. And that’s not just me enjoying the smell of my own product, it’s reality. It’s fact. But just because I’m really, REALLY good at this, doesn’t mean I’m incapable of knowing my limits. Remember all that stuff I said before? Poopy diapers, etcetera? My whole life has been limits, so it’d be pretty pathetic if I didn’t recognize them now. Hell, I can pop off four names off the top of my head that I’m not sure I could beat.

Alias
Doc (as much as it pains me to admit it)
Sarah Lacklan (that chick beat Lux!)
Chris Page….LOL, NO!
Actually, it’s my good friend Thad Duke. We know each other too well.

You still consider me some oblivious golden child who’s entitled to the world? Check this. Nobody would have batted an eye if I laid claim to a Universal title shot months ago. Nobody. But I didn’t. You know why? Because I wasn’t sure I was ready. GASP! Sacre bleu! Is that some...insight? Humility?! By golly….

Incidentally, the second reason I didn’t lay claim to a Universal title match upon my return was because I realized I hadn’t even been a presence here in ages, so I just didn’t earn it. That’s what sets me apart from others who consider themselves a “gift from on high” to the XWF and see this company as nothing more than an extension of their own shameless egos rather than a compilation of the hopes and dreams of scores of talented people over two decades.

Good job in that battle royale though, Robert!



Their blades screech as steels lays into steel. The Clean Room is alive with their respective furies. But the contest is beginning to go the only way it could ever possibly have gone. Lux presses her advantage, bearing down on Iggy until he’s forced to break left and retreat.

But Lux is inevitability personified, the woman who stood in the face of a mad future and did not blink. She takes to the air, somersaulting up and over Iggy to surprise him from behind. Iggy fumbles again, his expression leaks desperation as his limbs quake for the strain of this fight. Lux surprises him with a parry, and then a kick to the chest that sends him sprawling. She’s on him with a preternatural quickness, her blade hungry at his throat.

Yield.




We return to Corey, whose garbage bag is halfway full now. Good job, Corey. But at first he stands still, expression again looking disconnected. Ultimately, he shakes his head, clearing the metaphorical cobwebs.

There is one concession I do have to make to Centurion. When it comes to the whole Graves kidnapping Dolly deal, he is correct. I did nothing to help Dolly back then. Now, I could proffer up excuses like the fact that I was riding shotgun in my own body at the time, and the driver was too busy saving the world to effectively mount a search and rescue. Or that I barely even knew Dolly back then! But I won’t.

Corey turns away from the camera and calls out, DOLLY WOLLY!

Dolly Waters enters stage left. What’s up Corey?

Corey’s expression goes solemn. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t help you when Michael Graves kidnapped you back in 2019. I feel awful about it.

Dolly….laughs? Hey-zoos Christo, Corey, how many times are we gonna do this?! Look, it’s fine! Okay?! The only thing that happened was that Graves and I played Monopoly, watched cartoons and ate cereal. And then, when it got old, I bailed out the backdoor while he was jerking off to tentacle porn. But honestly, I mostly just felt bad for the guy. She looks at the camera with a sarcastic smirk Harrowing, right? And besides, was everyone sleeping on the fact that I destroyed Graves at Match Madness 2019 and shot him in the knee?!

Oh, wow! It sounds like you're a strong independent young woman who didn't need some sanctimonious swinging dick to come to your rescue in the first place! Insert knowing look at the camera here.

Nope! Now could you stop beating yourself up over this? Geeze…. She walks off camera.

Corey shrugs and looks ahead once more. Now let’s talk about Centurion’s monumental rescue efforts. Let’s talk about how that man left no stone unturned in his search for Dolly. Why, I bet he printed up flyers and organized search parties and sold his entire stock of Bleach Brite to pay for a private detective and called Interpol and….oh, wait, he did none of those things.

No, seriously, I went back to War Games 2019 and watched the promos. Your grand overture towards saving Dolly was facing Graves’ cousin (sister? sister/cousin?) Destiny in a Buried Alive Match and lucking into a two for one special when Mikey joined the party. You did literally nothing else. Nothing. Now, call me crazy, but if we were to do a Top 5 list of “Most Effective Ways to Help a Kidnapped Person”, I don’t think burying the kidnapper’s sister live on pay per view would make the cut.

So, like I said, VIRTUE SIGNALING. This was all about Centurion’s image of being a “good guy” rather than actually BEING a good guy. Kind of like how he’d rather get in slap fights with knuckle draggers from Info Wars than do something actually useful like lift a ladle at a homeless shelter. Or...I don’t know….open his home to the downtrodden and destitute.

And you see Cent, it’s not the fact that you (supposedly) did a good thing that bothers me. It’s the way you tried to use those actions like a cudgel without knowing the whole story. It’s how you used your low effort, facile, surface-level benevolence as an excuse to come in all pervy “Oh, Punish Me Daddy” style and justify fucking up Dolly’s retirement because YOU decided she didn’t deserve to go out on her terms. And on top of all of that, you accused her of faking the kidnapping, so we got a healthy dose of blaming the victim in there too. Boy, that really makes you sound like a huge twat when we put it like that, doesn’t it?

Take your halo and shove it up your pucker.

Now back to the rest of your “Abe Simpson shaking his fist at a cloud” level wharrgarbl. Hey kids, did you know that in order to throw out a challenge to somebody noteworthy and talented you have to achieve a vague level of importance as dictated by Centurion? Because GOD FOR FUCKING BID you try to test yourself. See, but Centy’s really showing his ass here because it would NEVER occur to him to toss out a challenge to one of the greats. And why? Because he’s a warmed over perennial mid-carder who knows he’d get shredded by them.

You see, some of us WELCOME a challenge. And whether that challenge is answered or not, it shows that people like me want great competition in all forms. Now I can see why such a concept would make you leak your trousers, but not me. It’s called being HUNGRY Cent. It’s called wanting to prove yourself. And the only reason you find it egotistical, and petulant, and spoiled is because YOU CAN’T DO IT. At least not anymore. So you try to shame me for doing it. You try to shame me for doing the same shit you did when you were young and full of piss and vinegar. You bitter old turd.

And please don’t flatter yourself by intimating that you and I are on the same rung of your imaginary hierarchy. Everybody in that locker room knows that you’re a Round One fight against Stryker whereas I’m at least a Goro, bitch. And the difference between you and I is that while I have the capacity to be a Shao Khan you’ll always be some scrub level D-tier character that the experienced players trick their little brother into playing. And I just realized you understood none of that. Fuck!

He shakes his hands as if dismissing the thought.

But you know it intuitively, don’t you? Yeah, you have an accurate accounting of your own limits. Why else would you spend two whole promos playing up how embarrassing it would be to lose to you? Why would you be so FIXATED on committing self own after self own if you didn’t realize how abjectly MEDIOCRE you are?

I'm not some narcissistic overconfident prat because I think I can beat you. I'm just reading the lay of the land, Centy. And from my vantage point, my side is fertile soil and gold deposits whereas you're more of a Swamp of Sadness. Fuck you for eating Artax by the way.

And riddle me this Old Spice, how does it compute that you are simultaneously so awful that losing to you would be a humiliation on par with a wet fart cut front and center in a spelling bee, and yet supremely confident that you’re gonna win this? Or at least, you WERE supremely confident. Pre-Mayday. Now it’s some mealy mouthed “Can I win this...who can say?” capitulation. Must be that another loss to superior younger talent has reminded you how long ago your fire got put out. And make no mistake, Cent, it’s out. It went out the moment you stopped dreaming of what could be and settled for just coasting along in the XWF. Fuck man, even YOU can’t explain why you’re still here.

If you’re not dreaming, you’re just comatose. And it’s time to take you off life support so your spot can go to somebody who actually knows what they want. It’s time to let us hot, young blood have our….


DRAGON AGE!

I mean, it’s just an objectively better series, really.



Lux considered Iggy imperiously, point of her blade still poised at his throat. And thus, the memory of the woman who defied time...Corey’s rock...the genesis of all his fighting prowess...and ultimately, the pain that drives him each and every day to be a better version of himself than he was the day before...stands triumphant. Pop the champagne. A happy ending.

But who’s writing the story?

A doppelganger of Iggy appears behind Lux’s memory and runs a blade across her throat. A malicious second smile appears, and Lux gasps, choking and sputtering, on her way to the ground.

Iggy watches the memory die. I’m writing the story. He says softly. I am.



Corey sinks to his knees. Something left him just then. He could feel it leave, like the departure of a soul. Something immaterial but vital. The shouts of concern become congealed murmurings behind the buzzing in his head. He starts to weep. But he can’t remember why.