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Thaddeus Duke · (03-12-2017)

Sunday, March 12, 2017 | 10:28 AM Local Time| Executive Office | Illuminatus Three

"Thaddeus," Jim says as he enters the flying fortress office of Thaddeus Duke aboard Illuminatus Three.

"What is it?" Thaddeus asks him.

"It's Broken Oswald."

"What about him?

"He's released two promo's on the web. The XWF site went back up the other night.

"He's fighting back, sir."

Thaddeus looks up at jim and smiles. "I couldn't be happier about that."

From his laptop, the young would-be Illuminatus heir logs into XWF99.com where the action never slows down unless there's a catastrophic outage. He begins playback. Thaddeus watches with great interest in Oswald all the way until the completion of the promos.

Once they're complete, Thaddeus closes his laptop and leans back in the chair and casually wipes a tear from his eye.

"Would you like a tampon? because I'm sure the pilot wouldn't mind landing this thing so you can plug up," Jim jokes.

"It's a sad story, Jim. I made fun of him a lot, but I can see why he feels broken. It can't be easy losing your parents at such a young age."

Jim remembers. He remembers that Thaddeus' own mother was killed. By his fathers hand no less. He remembers the fractured, if not completely broken relationship between Sebastian and Thaddeus Duke. He remembers that Thaddeus had no childhood and as a major result of that, Thaddeus gets very emotional when it comes to children. Thaddeus wants all children to experience the things he never had the opportunity to.

"Brother Oswald," he says, turning to the camera. "Let me first apologize for the way I've treated you since my arrival here. I've treated you as a second rate competitor at best and I've said a lot of things demeaning your talent. Maybe you are second rate, maybe you're not, but I have shown you very little respect as a fellow competitor. I can not imagine going through what you have in your life.

"Both parents..." Thaddeus wipes a tear.

"Brother Oswald, win or lose, I extend my hand in friendship to you. You may take it, you may not. That choice is yours and yours alone. The offer stands regardless."

"Thaddeus, you can't just befriend everybody. You can't save the world and you can't fix everything and everyone that's broken."

"No, but wouldn't it be great if I could? Just the same, if I can reach out to those who are broken and hurting that I cross paths with, then at least someone is. I'd rather extend my hand and be turned away than to have the entire world continue to turn a blind eye when Brother Oswald here is exactly the type of person that could have shot up a school at a young age when he's not fully in control of his emotions and what they mean. Meanwhile, the media would have kept asking what went wrong and we need to blame the parents and whatever rationalization they want to use to absolve society of the role they played in what a broken child may have done."

James shuts up.

"Second, don't mistake my kindness for weakness, Brother Oswald. Yes I extend my hand in friendship, but make no mistake about it, in a few days time I am going to walk into Warfare as a mere contender and I'm walking out with the Unified Xtreme title in my possession.

"It is my time to shine and I'll plan on doing exactly that. It is my time to take home the... that belt is silver and that's stupid... Whatever. I'm taking the silver.

"On to important matters, such as things you've mentioned in your tear-jerker promo from a day ago.

"Brother Oswald, it is apparent that you do not read the fine print on documents you sign. You expect to have a briefcase after eight weeks but there's more to it than that. Yes, eight weeks is a requirement, but it's only one of them. You also must have five scheduled successful defenses. Eight weeks is the easy part. Five defenses is a bit more difficult seeing as you've likely never won five matches in a row during your tenure here in the XWF. Whether it be as Ghost Tank or as Broken Oswald so on and so forth, win streaks are not your style.

"There's nothing wrong with that, mind you. The world of wrestling especially, needs habitual losers that might pick up a win here or there. At least that way things aren't always a foregone conclusion. At least that way, there is an element of belief that perhaps Oswald can pull this one out. No matter how miniscule that chance is in this instance, the belief is there, albeit likely from very few, that maybe Broken Oswald does indeed have a chance to successfully defend his title against Thaddeus Duke."

"Spoiler alert: he doesn't."

"I don't care if you're full time, part time or no time. I was owed a shot at the Unified Xtreme title, but through no fault of your own, mind you, I was denied that shot that I earned now for months. I demanded my shot now because I was tired of waiting, Oswald. I was tired of waiting.

"Broken Oswald has become the next evolution of humanity. If he's the next evolution of humanity I think Its time Trump, Putin and all the other nuclear powers just hit the self destruct button now. I extend my hand in friendship but make no mistake about it, the world doesn't need 7 billion broken souls wandering about furiously smashing the delete button.

"Oswald can do things I'll never accomplish.

"Like what exactly? Are you going to show us? Are you going to prove that or are you going to just blow smoke and hope someone might believe the rhetoric? Saying you're going to do things is not the same as actually doing things. No one cares if you can do a million different things if you don't actually do any of them.

"Yes, Brother Oswald, you have overcome all challengers. All one of them. All things have a beginning and an end. Nothing is sacred in that respect. Nothing is spared. Not you. Not me. Certainly not your reign as Xtreme champion. Your beginning was Scully at some point backstage.

"Your end is Warfare.

"Your end is Thaddeus Duke."

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