“Every climb begins from the ground, and from there, into skies unknown…”

And so Raion Kido had found himself on the ground once more. The match with Charlie Nickles had been a tough loss, but it was now time to make the comeback.

So it was, after all, for the Saints of Athena that he had seen on T.V. so many times in his childhood. Every time they got beat, they rose - on wobbling legs, barely able to stand, but they rose. Always, they rose.

And somehow, from some unfathomable depths in their souls, their cosmos would burn once more, like the stars that burned eternally in the sky.

The time for that, it seemed, had finally come for him.

“Hey son, do you know what color the sky is up there?”

“Eh?... Oh, I’m sorry.”

The young Lion finds himself brought back to earth by a hoarse, but amiable voice belonging to a man in his late 50s - a pilot in the air field he was in, sitting at the entrance of a hangar, and looking at a windswept, deserted runway, inside the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. In the late hours of the afternoon, the sun has begun its descent, making the dusty air in the field contrast against the lone strip of tarmac in the runway.

In front of the Lion is a red biplane, a relic from the 1930s, but pristine and in perfect condition, and the pilot is making some minor adjustments to it before the plane takes off, as it is meant to. After making some routine checks, the old man looks at the young wrestler one more time.

“The sky. You like looking at it, I see. You know the color it is when you see it from up there?”

Raion takes his fingers to his chin, taking just a second before uttering his reply.

“Dark blue.”

“That’s right. A deep, dark blue. It’s beautiful from anywhere, kid… but nothing beats being in the controls and seeing it from the cockpit.”

“I can believe that, sir. But then again, in order to see it from there, we have to go up first, do we not? And that tends to be the hardest part of all!”

The pilot responds to Raion with a heartfelt laugh and a pat on his shoulder.

“Right you are, kid! Come on, I’ve seen you out there. You’re good, no doubt - maybe even one of the best. But even the best come back to the ground sometimes, and that just means you can get back up once more! Otherwise, where would the fun be? Besides, getting back down means that, when we go back up again, we might be able to go further every time. To skies unknown!”

“Skies unknown?”

“That’s the beauty of it all, son. No sky is ever the same. It might be a calm day, there might be currents that rock the plane and you have to escape them or brave them, and even though you know where you want to go, you don’t know what will happen until you get there. And besides, we don’t even know how far we can go - until we try.”

Raion gives a small smile of his own, and rises from the chair, feeling the open air around him as he moves towards the plane.

“And only by rising once more and coming back from the flight can we prove we’re meant to be up there!”

“Exactly! Now - put these on. We don’t want that hair of yours to cover your eyes!”

The pilot produces an aviator cap with goggles, in the fashion of old. Raion gazes at it for a bit before adjusting the cap over his head, and the goggles over his eyes.

“Very good! Look at that…”

The pilot lifts a hand to the sky, feeling out the wind. Raion does the same, and feels the breeze blowing through his fingers.

“A fine eastern wind. It’s blowing against us, but we’re going to overcome it. Hop on, son - every climb begins from the ground, and we’re now starting ours!”

Raion climbs up to the passenger’s seat in the plane, and soon enough, the pilot hops into the cockpit. The flight crew down below approach and start spinning the aircraft’s propeller.

*VROOM!*

*VROOM!*

*VROOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!*

The Lion is somewhat startled as the ground begins to shake below him, and the rumbling sound of the old plane’s engine deafens his ears, but soon enough, the pilot turns towards him, giving him a confident smile and a thumbs up sign.

“You ready, boy!?”

Gritting his teeth, the Lion makes honor to his name, and responds to the gesture in kind.

“Let’s go! To skies unknown!”

“Alright! Hold on tight because it’s gonna be a wild ride…!”

The old machine begins to wheel down the runway, slow at first, but accumulating speed with every moment, until the pilot jerks the controls down and the aircraft begins its new ascent, gaining altitude bit by bit, and slowly climbing into the blue sky…

*VRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!*



Dusk falls over the city of Ottawa, painting the few clouds in the sky in an amalgam of lush orange and purple colors. The buildings of Parliament Hill start glimmering in the waning sunlight, and amongst these rises the Peace Tower, more than 300 feet above ground. The bells of the tower start tolling, their song drowning almost every other sound in the vicinity…

“Every climb begins from the ground.”

… except for the sound of an old biplane flying by the tower, painted red and white in the motif of the Canadian flag, and inside the plane is Raion Kido - clad in a black leather jacket, blue jeans, and an aviator’s cap covering his lion’s mane.

“No matter how high one may climb, they have to start from the same place. And once one has climbed, it’s only a matter of time before they are back to the ground, only to climb once more.

There is not much else I can say about that, unfortunately. Charlie Nickles hit a low blow, but he did beat me. And then Bobby Bourbon came to attack me. Which means that I owe them both some form of payback.

But in order to be able to do that, the first order of business is for me to get past next Savage Saturday Night, and the Elite 8 Tournament. Which means that, for the moment, Cage Coleman must come first.

Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, this presents us with a problem.”

The Lion removes his cap, letting his wild hair free. If he was to begin his comeback, it was time to make a strong statement.

He wasn’t going to let a title match loss be the end of the road he’d begun to walk.

“You see, I could tell you that Cage Coleman is a former XWF 24/7 Xtreme Champion, and, like Thaddeus Duke and Centurion, I could begin my comeback by beating yet another decorated name in the XWF.

I could also tell you that Cage Coleman is a very tough challenger, with excellent wrestling skills, that will endure every type of punishment he can absorb and keep fighting until he can no longer, as he has done in an Iron Man Match, a no-limit match, and a four-way match for the 24/7 Xtreme Title; and as I myself have done just in the last edition of Savage Saturday Night in a barbed-wire deathmatch.

I could even tell you that all of that makes for another Main Event of its own if there weren’t one already, and that him and I meeting will be the very match of the night, as I could tell you happened in every single match I’ve had so far, regardless of the outcome.

I could tell you all of that, and I’d be telling you no lies, so you could very well assume that I am telling the truth.

But sadly, there are layers to this truth that make it seem quite different.”

Arching his eyebrows, Raion begins to show that bare-toothed smirk. Cage Coleman liked to talk about handling the truth, and the Lion would put those words to the test in the only way he knew - by letting his inner cosmos burn.

Could Cage Coleman handle his own truth?

“Because, ladies and gentlemen, this Cage Coleman, self-proclaimed ‘greatness’, has so far shown that nowhere, in any shows of which he’s been part. I don’t mean to claim that I am a great wrestler, like our own Traveler has; I would rather let my actions show it, like he has claimed he does, but I’d expect ‘greatness’ to at least win their debut match. Cage Coleman hasn’t done that, whereas I have, and in a Pay-Per-View no less. I would also expect greatness incarnate to win a grueling match for the title they hold, which Charlie Nickles, it pains me to say, has done against me. Cage Coleman, however, just happened to retain his title… in a draw.

What can one say to that? It would be completely hilarious, were it not so utterly tragic. But why stop there? There’s plenty more we can go on about. I would also expect greatness to be able to defend his title against the same opponent, especially when they’ve faced three times, but in the end, Reggie Estrada cut that short. Then came Fire and Ice, Cage Coleman lost one more time - and not even to his rival, but to Marf Swaysons -, and hasn’t been seen since.

Come to think about it, it’s very much like the politics he likes to involve himself in as well. Much like the very own conservative movement that our esteemed Cage Coleman likes to bring up every time he has a microphone near him, the fact that he continues to somehow attempt to hang on to relevance when he should have already become a footnote in history after having got somewhere through sheer force of luck is an indictment of the standard of competition he claims to want to bring to the XWF.”

As the plane comes full circle around the Peace Tower, the Lion’s smirk turns into a fierce, combative snarl. He was aware he was coming from his first loss and it was not a small one. But he also remembered how he had come this way. And the Lion would not stray. Not now, not ever.

There was, like always, an example to set.

“And before you say anything, Cage, this is your own idea laid out right in your face. These are your own values thrown back at you. Did you not claim to have standards? Was that not, you claimed, what set you apart from Reggie Estrada and the rest of the XWF roster? If going for the easy 24/7 win wasn’t already low, retaining it through a sheer miracle and losing it at the next opportunity has undoubtedly sunk that speech of yours to the depths of the underworld.

Furthermore, didn’t you also say to him that he lucked out into the history books as if he mattered? The worst part of it all is that at least he made it into a Pay-Per-View as the reigning Champion, whereas the only moment of relevance you had in your reign was a 30-minute match that you didn’t even manage to win. Well then, what do you say to that now? The very thing you accused Reggie Estrada of doing, you’ve managed to do worse. I would call that a humiliation, but you’ve already suffered that at the hands of Charlie Nickles already - at least he didn’t beat me with my own move.

And after all of that, for all we know, you might as well have crawled down the deepest hole you could find and currently dwell there in eternal shame the way Donald Trump does after the election, but that’s okay. You didn’t need to cut a promo anyway, and quite frankly, just like him, the amount of political venom you want to spew into every speech you make makes everyone wish you didn’t.”

The plane begins to rise again, and Raion Kido raises a hand, as if he were waving that off. Cage Coleman might like to bring politics into everything, but he would focus on the task at hand - to focus on Cage himself, and to bring him down.

This was, after all, a matter of honor - and honor demanded nothing less.

“But I digress. Tell me, Cage, in the face of all I’ve said: what exactly makes you ‘great’? Since the very first moment you arrived here, your path has been a constant stumbling. You began with a loss against the King of the Midcarders, and in less time than you’ve been here, I’ve beaten a Main Eventer and a Legend. Just last show, and even if I didn’t win, I was in a Main Event of my own against a Champion, where the best you have done is fall short one match before that. just like this time, but here’s the catch: the only reason our match is so high up the card is because of me.

Take this into account before you even say anything, Cage. The XWF management, the rest of the roster and the XWF Universe have seen us both, they know what each of us can do already. They’ve heard us speak, and they’ve seen us wrestle, and they know just how far I am able to go. Me? Even with no titles, they know I can succeed. But you? Even with a belt under your name, they’ve already seen you fail.

So before you want to talk about me, Mr. Traveler, make sure to remember that. This match wasn’t made because of anything you’ve done. This match was booked specifically to see if Cage Coleman is able to go against the fangs of the Lion.”

Lips peeled back, and canines now showing, Raion Kido clenches his fist. It was time for the XWF Universe to know what happened when the Lion got knocked down - he would rise up once more, and even stronger.

The plane now moves away from Parliament Hill, rising up until the sky is a deep, dark blue. And as the plane rises, so does the cosmos of the young Saint of Athena.

“And here’s the main problem of it all, Cage - this is supposed to be your bread and butter! You’re meant to be an excellent wrestler! If all you do is wrestle, if the biggest talent to your credit are your purported wrestling skills, and this is as far as you managed to go, you’re better off doing those other things you boast on doing, as do those alt-right figures you very vocally support. Do your interviews, do your talk shows, do your celebrity game shows for charity, go have sex with the groupies, and leave the actual wrestling to those that are good at it. Because Cage, from what the rest of the roster, the XWF Universe and I have seen, you don’t belong in this tournament. Just like those alt-right grifters, you’re far from Elite - you haven’t even shown to be remotely competent.

But nevertheless, Cage, I’m a patient man, and I’m willing to believe that there’s more to you than your Saiyan armor and your green Sentai helmet, just as there is more to me than my Gold Cloth and my Leo sign. I’m willing to believe that you have some semblance of competence, since you could at least get a cheap title win and hold on to it despite going against greater talent, and so I’m going to treat you accordingly.

Therefore, when you come to Savage Saturday Night, I’m going to grant you the courtesy of going against someone that has already proven the greatness and the quality you’ve filled your mouth about, but so far failed to show, and I’m going to face you as if you had - the same way I would do any other wrestler. Because you may claim to hold some standards, but that’s the one that I adhere to - and it’s a lot higher than yours.

Because even if you’ve been but a mere footnote in the pages of XWF history, and your name in the books is there only because of good fortune, you still remain a former Champion. Because even if your so-called greatness is shown to be nothing but lies, there is a certified truth to Raion Kido’s talent and skills - to be one of the very best in the XWF roster. And because even if it is nothing less than my duty to put you down and out of everybody’s misery, to me, this match still goes beyond you.

For me, this is a new take-off. The beginning of a comeback and the first step towards the retribution I am owed, be it at March Madness or beyond. The XWF Universe has only known me so far in victory, they’ve heard me talk about making one’s soul burn, and now they’re going to know exactly what those words mean - they’re about to find out what happens after defeat. Every time a Saint of Athena is knocked down, their inner cosmos burns that much brighter - and they come back that much stronger. To climb into new heights.

To soar up into skies unknown.

But every climb, Cage Coleman, must inevitably begin from the ground.”

Finally, the plane touches down, and Raion Kido climbs out - almost leaping from his seat into the tarmac of the runway below his feet. Letting out his trademark roar, he makes a final pointing gesture towards the camera, the echo of his words being carried by the wind in the empty runway.

“And come Saturday Night Savage, that’s exactly where, and what, you’re going to be.”

Fade to black.