PROMO: 'Good Morning'

[Toxxic 0]

Jet wanders downstairs, hair as tousled as it’s ever possible for dreadlocks to be, only a very large Ramones T-shirt providing any real shield against potential fly-on-the-wall documentaries. The Philly Madgirl rubs her eyes wearily; they hadn’t stopped after From The Fire. For some reason Toxxic had demanded that they blow town immediately after he got his broken nose fixed up, picking their things up from the hotel and signing out that night, all the time with a cold blankness in his grey eyes that made her think uncomfortably of the previous summer. They’d made California a couple of hours before dawn, and Jet had gone straight to bed. Wobbling down the hallway, it takes a moment for her to register what she sees out of the corner of her eye.

 

Toxxic is sitting on his sofa in the living room, apparently staring at the far wall.

 

This in itself is not an uncommon occurrence. The Straight-Edge Sensation has his widescreen TV on that wall and he regularly watches hour after hour of videos and DVDs, searching for his next opponent’s weakness or studying old matches to eliminate his own. However, this morning there is a difference; no sound. Poking her head fully around the door, Jet looks over at the wall and sees that there is another difference.

 

No picture. Toxxic really is staring at the wall.

 

“Toxx?”

 

No reply.

 

“Mike?”

 

Still nothing. A faint flicker of the eyelids, nothing more. He still even has the smudged remnants of his eyeliner streaked down his cheeks.

 

“Jesus Mike, have you slept?” Jet asks, sitting down next to him. This elicits a response of a sort, at least; Toxxic blinks a few times and murmurs something indecipherable that she takes to mean ‘no’. Pursing her lips, she sits back for a moment. She hasn’t seen Toxxic like this since… well, ever. The night after he lost the ICTV Title for the second time he had been bad, but she’s never known him to go a night without sleep before. Taking a deep breath she forces her face into a smile and leans forward, tapping two fingers against the side of the Straight-Edge Sensation’s head.

 

“Listen to me, sunshine,” she says, deliberately using his own word. “I’m gonna get some coffee, and then you’re going up to bed and you are going to sleep, you got me?”

 

* * * * * * * * * * *

 

Toxxic lies in bed and stares at the ceiling, instead of the wall. His eyes are so, so heavy and his thoughts are going around in circles but he can’t sleep - not yet. There are things he must decide first.

 

I wonder how Landon is.

 

Most of the straight-edger’s night has been spent reliving those last few moments. He’d found the energy to take Landon’s legs out with a soccer tackle and had double-underhooked him, ready for the Toxxic Shock Syndrome. The Caffeine Bomb had been countered before and he wasn’t prepared to risk it; ditto the Dangerlust. He certainly didn’t have the strength or balance left to run up the turnbuckles for the Intoxxication. But then he hadn’t delivered the move that he had been planning - instead he had changed his mind at the last moment and hoisted Landon vertical before dropping him straight down with the Demonstar Driver.

 

Every time I start to forget, something about Kibagami pops up to remind me of him. I should have known it would, seeing as how we were Arizona.

 

Toxxic’s brain isn’t working properly; the lack of sleep is making him easily distracted. He can still remember the burning hatred he held for the man known as Silent, however. He remembers rewinding the video, again and again, watching that man drive him headfirst into the mat. And now, he’s done the same thing to Landon Maddix.

 

It wouldn’t have happened if he’d just stayed down…

 

Really, there was no way Landon should have been able to beat the count after taking the Caffeine Bomb. The fact that he did had thrown Toxxic to the point where he nearly lost the match, and had resorted to the Demonstar out of… what? Desperation? A desire to keep the World Title? Or a simple, burning desire to remove Landon Maddix from his life as effectively as he had removed Nathaniel Kibagami - in person, at least?

 

Is keeping the title worth maybe breaking Landon’s neck? Yes, probably. Is keeping the title worth becoming like Nathaniel?

 

…no.

 

People get it wrong, still. They assume that Toxxic’s hatred of Kibagami stemmed from the fact that the River Dragon had been the first man in a long, long time to pin Toxxic. They were partially correct, but the truth ran deeper. Toxxic simply couldn’t stand the man. His arrogance, his bearing, his history of substance abuse, his assumption that anything he touched automatically became better simply because he was involved. His sheer lack of respect for anyone else - although Toxxic taught him the error of that belief at 13th Hour. The Straight-Edge Sensation knows the stories about why Kibagami was so desperate to get his hands on Edwin MacPhisto, and can understand that. The fact that Silent practically ended the career of one of the most talented and charismatic individuals ever to set foot in the SWF means virtually nothing to him. In his days of watching the SWF on his TV in Nottingham, Toxxic used to admire Edwin as a foreigner that the largely-xenophobic US fans would support, not the man himself. It was the others that bugged him; the fact that Nathaniel Kibagami, or Silent, would drop anyone in his way on their head without a care. Toxxic, despite the hatred that has been rained down on him by the fans ever since he - as he saw it - stood up to Mark Stevens a year ago, has always known that he is different to Kibagami.

 

Until now. Now he has a choice to make.

 

It wasn’t Landon’s fault. I can’t blame him for this. He got up because he was trying to win the match, just like me. I didn’t have to do that - I could have hit him with anything else. It might not have won me the match, but that’s not the point. It was my choice.

 

So what do I do now?

 

Another image flashes unbidden through the straight-edger’s brain; over a year ago this one, him losing his temper completely in a hardcore match with Jacob Helmsley and giving the Canadian a Caffeine Bomb through a chair seat. He doesn’t remember the end of that infamous Last Man Standing match with Kibagami, but he has seen it on tape often enough to know what it looked like from an outsider’s standpoint. And lurking treacherously at the back of his mind, the day that he broke the neck of a promising young rookie called Justin Bowers. Granted, Bowers had been gunning for Toxxic as revenge for Revolution Zero taking out his trainer, William Heartford III. And granted, Bowers had placed himself on Toxxic’s shoulders in the perfect position for the Dangerlust as he tried to hit a reverse hurricanrana. Nevertheless, the look of impotent rage and loss in Heartford’s eyes as they loaded his protégé onto a stretcher haunts the Brit to this day, despite his impassive façade at the time.

 

This needs to end. Now. Even the Caffeine Bomb will go wrong sooner or later. I will not let twenty pounds of gold turn me into… him. There are more ways to beat someone than dropping them on their head.

 

A faint, weary grin passes over Toxxic’s face as he starts to fall asleep. He remembers first meeting up with Chris Card, the day after the Clusterfuck, and Technical Perfection’s horrified disbelief at his lack of mat wrestling skills. It seems that Card’s expertise is going to be in even higher demand than before.

 

I bet people are going to think this’ll make me easy to beat. Guess I’ll just have to prove them wrong…

[Toxxic 0]

For Landon's benefit - this promo is deliberately ambiguous. Sell the neck however you want.