Arena Monterey, Mexico (parking lot).

Danny Christie is still at the arena.

Agitation doesn’t begin to cover it. This is injustice— the kind that lingers in the body long after the moment has passed. At ReViVal 80, he took apart a true fighting man in Luc Labelle. No theatre. No shortcuts. Just proof. And yet, tonight at ReViVal 81… nothing. No booking. No direction. Just silence.

PRIME dangling the carrot. Again.

Danny Christie has always been too stubborn for his own good. Or so they say. Suppose it depends on whose viewpoint matters. From certain sections of the PRIME locker room, the consensus would be that this stinks of ungratefulness. That this is unreasonable self-seclusion. A man choosing distance and calling it principle.

DC has never trusted consensus.

What’s ironic— painfully so— is how the man standing outside the wrestling bubble, refusing to submit to its culture, is slowly becoming a version of himself he truly despises.

A parody.

He frames himself as The Realest Motherfucker. Proudly declaring to the entire combat world that he isn’t like the others. That he’s different.

That he’s real.

A gimmick, whether he knows it or not.

Inside the van, Danny Christie adjusts the rear-view mirror. Just enough to catch his own reflection staring back. He holds it there for a beat. The glow of the Realest Motherfucker trophy gleaming in the corner of the glass.

The advice has always been consistent. From veterans and casuals alike.

Learn psychology.

Read your opponent. Feel the crowd. Understand what comes next instead of forcing it. Don’t fall into the trap of the performer who always needs to get his shit in. Let the match— or the fight— flow.

Because when you’re not booked… you’re not booked.

Ask Dennis Stamp From Beyond The Mat if that’s a philosophy you really want to test. Principles intact. Dignity preserved. Relevance gone. DC has quoted that story before— not as a warning, but as proof that some lines shouldn’t be crossed.

Maybe he should listen to his own advice.

Ahead of ReViVal 80, he talked about being first in and last out. About work. About standards. About measuring himself against men held up as untouchable.

Well.

He’s the last one here tonight.

Earlier, there was a moment that didn’t sit right. A door that wasn’t his. A space that carried a name it shouldn’t have. Shrugged off by others as a mix-up. Harmless. Administrative. Nothing worth reading into.

Funny how often nothing keeps happening.

Now there’s no afterparty. No closure. Just that sense of injustice buzzing under his skin, demanding to be acknowledged.

The van coughs into life. Metal complains. It bangs and pops as he throws it into reverse. No indicator as he heads up the ramp and disappears into the dark.

Still standing apart.

Still unmoved.

Still telling himself that refusing to bend is the same thing as being right.

🌞 ⛈️

The van eats the dark, headlights tunnelling forward like it’s got somewhere to be. The radio still can’t decide what it wants to be. Static. A burst of Spanish talk radio. Norteño guitar. A clipped newsreader. Then nothing. Then something else. Always wrong. Always mid-sentence.

Danny Christie twists the dial. Taps it. The sound fractures again.

A voice bleeds through for half a second — sports, maybe — then a drum hit from a song he doesn’t recognise. Heavy. Martial. Almost choral. The volume spikes on its own before collapsing back into hiss.

He exhales through his nose and punches the dashboard. Hard.

Silence.

The phone vibrates in the cup holder.

BIG JOHN

Not Dad.

Not Father.

That stopped being true when Danny was six. After that came whistles, timers, instructions barked between rounds. If the relationship needed a name, coach would do. Corner man, when things were good.

Danny flicks it to speaker and drops the phone back down.

No hello.

Big John Christie is already talking. Complaining about the booking. The timing. The way PRIME always seems to manufacture complications and then act surprised when people choke on them. About how nothing is accidental — even when they swear it is.

Danny half listens.

He reaches down, twists the cap off a beer bottle, takes a long pull. Lets it burn. Lets it wash away the locker room. The door that wasn’t his. The sense that something had been moved just to see if he’d notice.

Big John keeps going. About optics. About positioning. About how this isn’t what they discussed.

Then— casually. Almost carelessly—

“—and it’s a tag match.”

Danny lowers the bottle.

“A what?”

“A tag,” Big John repeats. Flat. “ReViVal 82. You won’t be on your own.”

The van hums. Tyres grind against tarmac. The road doesn’t react. Doesn’t care.

Danny says nothing.

Then the radio crackles back to life.

Not loud. Not clear. Just enough.

Static gives way to something rhythmic. Low voices layered under the noise. A male choir, distant and severe. A fragment of Russian— harsh consonants, rolling weight— then a burst of music that sounds old, nationalistic, almost ceremonial. For a split second, a presenter’s voice cuts through, mispronouncing a Scottish name with a thick Slavic accent before it’s swallowed again.

Danny’s jaw tightens.

“Your partner will be the other Big John.”

The radio surges— volume spiking on its own now— bleeding in overlapping sounds. Crowd noise. That same choral refrain. A distorted voice repeating something he can’t quite catch. Not Spanish. Not English. Not quite Russian anymore either.

Big John’s voice keeps coming through the phone, irritated, insistent, trying to talk over it.

Danny snaps.

He swerves the van onto the shoulder, slams it into park, and rips at the dashboard with both hands. Plastic cracks. Wires scream. He tears the radio unit free, yanks it out like he’s pulling a rotten tooth.

The noise dies instantly.

Dead air.

He sits there breathing hard, the loose radio hanging by its wiring like a severed thing. The phone still on speaker. Big John still talking.

Danny drops the radio onto the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” he finally says. Calm again. Too calm.

“I heard you.”

The van pulls back onto the highway.

And somewhere in the silence he’s just created, something listens.

Something speaks.

“Welcome to Mythos Radio,” a voice says from the radio resting in the passenger seat. Southern, buttery. “I'm your host, Mythos, covering all the news - Real, and Unreal.”

If Danny Christie hears it, he isn't acknowledging it.

“That's the funny thing about being real, ain't it? Everything else is real, too.”

Christie's teeth clinch.

“The anger. The jealousy. The resentment.”

His foot on the gas pedal gets heavier.

The engine reaches new RPMs.

“And if you're the Realest Motherfucker of all the motherfuckers, then – heh, well –”

He grips the steering wheel like it's the neck of his worst enemy.

“All your problems are the realest motherfuckers too, ain't they?”

“FUCK OFF,” Christie demands, throwing the radio out the window.

In the far distance, his silhouette captured by the headlights of the van, is Big John.

Not the salty father.

The Pepper variety.

He dances in the street with a feral dog on its hind legs.

Danny Christie feels himself accelerate on the gas pedal, flooring the van towards him.

He didn't need a tag team partner.

It was an insult.

A disgrace.

Before Big John can look up from waltzing with a stray mutt in the middle of the lonely, Monterrey street?

BAM!

Danny Christie's van collides into him at sixty-five miles an hour.

His body rolls up the hood of the van, collides into the windshield, and with an insane whiplash effect he flies off the side of the van and skids across the ground.

Danny Christie slams on his brakes.

Throws it in park, pulls the emergency brake.

Steps out of the van.

Addresses Big John, whilst casually knocking the dirt up with his feet.

“Listen, John. I always ride solo. It's nothing personal. It just really needs to be that way —”

Only then, does he realize.

That is not Big John Pepper.

That is Big John Christie.

His father.

Twisted, mangled.

Broken.

In the far away distance, he can still hear that blasted radio station.

“See what I mean, compadre? Real motherfucking problems.”

Rather quickly, Danny Christie realizes his grasp of reality at this particular juncture is tenuous at best.

Unreal.

🌞 ⛈️

“Never apologize for how you feel. It's like being sorry for being real.” - Lil Wayne “It should've been you.”

Danny Christie sits in a hospital room inside of San Jose Hospital, nervously fidgeting, gnawing one of his fingernails.

The police had asked their questions. He had to trust the translator was honest.

More honest than he was.

Can you imagine what Danny's fate would be had he been? “Well officer, I was having some kind of psychotic episode and believed I was purposefully running over my co-worker, not accidentally running over my father. Total misunderstanding!”

So much for being real, eh partner?

“Shut up,” Danny says to no one in particular, or everything that exists.

Suddenly, the door to the room swings open.

Carts are wheeled in.

Flower bouquets.

Way too many.

An absurd amount of bouquets filter into the room, filling it up to the brim. How many are there, really?

Hundreds?

“What is all this?” Danny Christie demands.

The cart pushers either ignore him, or don't speak English enough to understand the question.

Either way, they go about their work and pay him no mind.

But then, to Danny's surprise, his question is, in fact, answered.

“I saw everything,” a booming, masculine voice says as it strides into the room.

Big John Pepper.

“And I am so sorry.”

Danny Christie's shock at seeing his tag partner for ReV 82 quickly gives way to a kind of burning seething bore from selfishness.

“It should've been you,” Danny Christie says.

“I beg your pardon?” Big John Pepper replies, a confused smile beneath his mustache.

“You were on that street.”

“Yes.”

“It should've been you.”

Danny adjusts in his chair, sighs and says, “Actually, it should've been me.”

A pregnant pause.

Danny continues, “It should've been me booked in a match instead of you. It should've been me with my name on that locker room placard. It should've been me at Colossus, wrestling for a championship. It should've been me winning Rookie of the Year. It should've been me. It should've been ME!”

Big John Pepper examines Danny Christie with a raised eyebrow.

“Is that thing always sitting over your head like that?” Pepper asks.

“What?”

“That storm cloud.”

Danny's irritation with the question is only rivaled by his annoyance that he actually tilted his head up and looked.

He snaps his eyes back towards Big John Pepper.

“Fuck you, man.”

Danny Christie, the Realest Motherfucker in PRIME, frustratedly stands to exit his own father's hospital room, the room he put him in, leaving him with a weirdo and enough flowers to fill a graveyard.

But not before… that voice. That presence– in full takeover once again. Without radio soundwaves.

Big John Christie’s eyes thunder open.

The spiritual force using the patient as a mouthpiece. No words spoken but clear and precise musical hums come from his lips.

Big John Pepper smiles at him.

🌞 ⛈️

The doors don’t open fast enough. Danny Christie is already moving, past the nurse, past the quiet voices, past anything that might slow him down. His shoulder clips the frame as he goes. He needs out.

Daylight stops him.

Traffic moves. The hospital keeps breathing behind him. He takes a breath of his own, sharp at first, then measured, as the smell of antiseptic finally lets go.

Danny looks up.

The sky is open, clouded but calm. One raindrop finds him in the eye. He recoils, irritated, wipes it away like it’s nothing.

Then the rain answers back.

People scatter. Heads drop. Coats come up. Danny stays exactly where he is, letting it fall on him, unmoving, receiving it. What others would call misfortune, or injustice, he doesn’t name at all.

He lifts his head again.

Not searching. Not demanding..

Just looking.

And the sky looks back.

Stares right into his soul.

“Is that always sitting over your head like that?” Pepper asks.

“What?”

“That storm cloud.”

Why does that bother him?

And why did the sky confirm it?

Danny shakes his head. Could he blame Lindsay Troy for the sky as well?

Would anyone listen if he did?

As Danny walks down the edge of a Monterrey street, he pretends the rain isn't as real as he is, heading towards the only sign on the street with an illuminated light. The sign has but one word written on it, but at a time like this, it stands out as the one word Danny Christie would like to see.

“Tequila.”

He hustles to the door and slides inside.

The place certainly has a vibe to it. The building itself is tiny, painted bright blue with murals of ancient warriors as well as modern-day bar patrons enjoying themselves on it. The rain tapping the red, metal roof created a beautiful pitter-patter sound that lulled the nerves towards relaxation.

Inside, quiet conversations and yellow-orange lighting that is warm and cool all at once. The patrons are the same. Warm. Cool.

Danny Christie takes a seat at the bar. He makes eye contact with the bartender and shows him two fingers.

Two shots of tequila, quickly placed in front of him, with some lime wedges.

Danny takes the first shot.

No lime.

“Keep ‘em coming,” he says, shortly before downing the second.

🌞 ⛈️

Hey there, partners.

It's me. Your friendly, neighborhood Mythos.

Now you might think I've been being a little hard on the Realest Motherfucker in PRIME, but if I'm being honest with you?

I think he needs some tough love from me.

Here is a man who has created entire myths in his head about the world around him. He is underappreciated, underutilized, and underrated while simultaneously dealing with a boss who oversteps and overlooks him.

Why, it's enough to send a man overboard.

But make no mistake, it's not the myth that drives me crazy.

It's that he thinks the myth is real.

He has confused domains.

If I can be real with ya, friend? That don't butter my biscuits nary a bit.

And yet, I can't help but feel…

Pity.

After all, he does have a storm cloud over his head.

Does a man deserve absolutely no sympathy just because he created the cloud and put it there to begin with?

I'm not sure I can accept that, compadre.

After all, so much of what I do, so much of the world's Mythos is built around the idea of redemption — of a human being overcoming that which destroys them, to become more than they were even prior to their own destruction.

In other words, for myth to occur, it can't always be sunny.

There has to be a little rain.

But like the little lady on the container of salt always says:

When it rains, it pours.

Fortunately, for me…

And for Danny Christie…

The worser the weather, the greater the myth.

🌞 ⛈️

Danny Christie jolts up. His head had been on the bar. Had he passed out? How long had been asleep?

His head throbs like someone beat him half to death with a hammer. His vision, blurry and increasingly difficult to focus.

He doesn't even notice the sunlight pouring into the bar when the door behind him swings open.

He doesn't even hear the heavy boots of Big John Pepper approaching the bar.

He does, however, feel Big John Pepper's hand rest on his shoulder as he takes a seat beside him.

“Tequila?” The bartender asks Big John.

“Napkin,” Big John Pepper replies. “Writing utensil.”

Danny Christie glances at Big John Pepper with irritation.

“How did you know I was here?” Christie asks.

The Bartender curiously slides a napkin and a red-ink pen to Big John.

“Had a feeling,” Big John replies as he doodles absent-mindedly on a napkin.

Danny considers his predicament. Weird things had happened in the night. He had made decisions that, in the hindsight view of a telescope fashioned from a hangover from Hell, seemed utterly psychotic.

“It was supposed to be you,” Danny Christie says.

Big John nods, never looking up from his napkin.

“Had a feeling,” he says again.

“Something snapped in me,” Danny admits. “I feel… oppressed. I feel like no one gives a fuck about my career except me. And you're right. There is a storm cloud over my head. It's always there. And it grows. Like a cancer. And I can't shake it. You understand?”

Big John Pepper shakes his head. He does not.

“I'm great at what I do,” Christie continues. “I was born to be a Universal Champion. I shouldn't be wrestling in a tag match against the Masters of the Moscowverse with some goof — no offense and all. But I should be in the ring with Ivan Stanislav, not those two. And I stand on my own two feet, not yours.”

Christie stands from the bar on wobbly legs.

“And until the day that I'm put in those spots? That storm cloud is gonna grow. I can't do anything about that.”

Big John Pepper, finally, shifts his eyes towards Danny.

“Well, that's not true, is it?” Big John grins. “You know, a long time ago, I punched a storm cloud right in the face.”

Danny Christie rolls his eyes.

“Well, that's not true, is it?” Christie replies, half-mockingly.

“Truer than not true,” Big John Pepper replies. He slaps Christie in the chest with a napkin, stands up and heads toward the exit. “I'll see you in Tijuana. Don't try to hit me with a car.”

Christie takes a look at the napkin.

“The hell is this?”

“It's a sunshine. With a smile on her face.” 🤙

Big John Pepper exits the bar, and, no longer eclipsed by his massive frame in the doorway, the sunlight pours in like melted heaven.

There are many myths, you know.

Some big, some small.

All unverifiable.

But the bartender in that establishment could've swore he saw a small, comforted grin brush across Danny Christie's face as the sunlight bathed his skin. “Thunderstorms are as much our friend as the sunshine.” - Criss Jami

🌞 ⛈️