May 30th had become an important day in the lives of Kyra Johnson and Ken Davison. It was the day that Carnage Wrestling held its final show, Underground: Totality. It was the day that Carnage closed its doors for what very well could be the final time.

It was also the day that Ken got down on one knee and proposed to Kyra, right there in the middle of that ring, creating a new, brighter future in the dying light of the thing that had brought the two of them together in the first place.

And now, May 30th was fast approaching once again.

“What do you mean you don’t like your dress anymore?!”

Kyra’s face was incredulous as she stared down into the dark brown eyes of her daughter. Adina didn’t back down though, staring defiantly back at her mother. So it seems, turning 5 has made her even more like Kyra… if that were even possible.

“Mommy…“

“Don’t you ‘Mommy’ me. We spent 4 hours trying to find you the perfect flower girl dress.”

Kyra holds up the dress in question, pointing at it for good measure.

“And this was the one you picked!”

Adina simply shrugs her shoulders, which nearly sends Kyra into ‘berserker’ mode.

“The wedding is less than two weeks away! I’ve got so much to do.. I can’t just ‘will’ a new, better dress into existence, Adina.”

“I don’t wanna wear this one!”

Adina whines. Kyra has to sit down, and when she does so, she puts her head into her hands and begins breathing a lot deeper.

“Be the calm…. be the motherfucking calm….”

“Mommyyyyy“

Kyra looks up, at the pseudo begging face in front of her.

“Child.. if you don’t–”

“OH MY GOD!!! LOOK AT YOU!!!” Ken gushes as he enters the room, scooping up Adina. “You know, you’re going to need a new dress. You know you aren’t supposed to look better than the bride.”

Adina laughs, wrapping her arms around Ken’s neck.

“I do not!”

“I’m serious. It’s our special day. You simply CANNOT upstage her.” Ken smiles at Kyra, adding enough playfulness to his words to de-escalate the rambunctious Kyra 2.0. “I cannot, WILL not, allow it.”

Kyra glances from Ken to Adina, only to catch the little heathen giving her an ornery smirk. Kyra already knew what was coming when Adina turned her little head towards Ken and put both of her little hands on either side of his face.

“I like this dress and I wanna wear it.”

Shaking her head and rolling her eyes, Kyra can’t help but chuckle.

“This is your battle now.”

She says to Ken before she falls backwards into the plush sofa, covering her face with her arms.

“So, Adina, what were you giving your mother a hard time about?” Ken asks with a look of mock consternation on his face. “Hmmm…”

Like she’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Adina immediately tries to explain away the last ten minutes like they were nothing. All with that sweet, innocent expression on her face.

“I..Nothing! I wasn’t giving a hard time! Mommy was giving ME a hard time Daddy.”

She finishes that sentence with a nod, as if she were driving the point home. Kyra let’s her arms fall to her sides and glances up at Ken, shaking her head. She can’t stand how easy it is for her kid to make up lies on the spot… but she’s also kind of impressed by the little shits cunning attempts at manipulation.

“Oh yeah?”

Kyra interjects, her eyes moving from Ken’s face to the wide-eyed stare of her daughter.

“And why was I giving you a hard time?”

Adina gives Kyra a dirty look.

“You… You… OH MOMMY YOU MAKE ME SO MAD!”

“Feelings mutual, kiddo.”

Ken turns around, doing his best to stifle the laugh coming from the situation that he created.

“Adina, I’m going to shoot you a fair one.”

“Huh?” she asks quizzically

“That means I’m going to be straight up and honest with you. No bullshit.”

“OOOH!!! You said the brown word!”

“I’m a grown ass man. I can do that.”

“You said the green word!” Adina squeals.

“Did she color code all the bad words?” Ken questions while looking over to Kyra.

Kyra shrugs. “Just wait until you find out the orange word,” she deadpans and then silently mouths the word ‘fuck’ to Ken.

“Uuuuhhhhh… okay, then,” he says as turns back to Adina. “Anywho, your mother and I love you very much. That dress is absolutely gorgeous and it’s the prettiest shade of orange that I have ever seen. When we get married, you are going to be able to wear this dress, wear a little bit of makeup, and you get to walk down the aisle, even before your mother. You are absolutely gorgeous and that dress is a part of that.”

Adina tilts her head to the side.

“But I didn’t get ta wear the last one..”

In this instant, Kyra sits straight up. Every shred of anger gone from her face.

“That’s what this is about?”

Her last engagement, she’d bought Adina a dress but obviously she never got to wear it. Kyra can’t believe that she remembered it… as much as Kyra herself tried to forget.

“Last one? Oh… shit.” The realization hit Ken like a ton of bricks. Through all of their shared history, Ken hadn’t realized Kyra had been THAT close to marrying ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named.’ Ken looks to Kyra who is still very much taken aback. “May I? Or do you think that you’d rather handle this one?”

The silence in the room is deafening. Every millisecond feels like an hour. Kyra simply nods her head. She doesn’t have words right now. Her cheeks burn with a combination of guilt and embarrassment. Hell she can’t even bring her head up to look either of them in the eye. To his credit, Ken sees this and kneels in front of Kyra, taking her hand while motioning for Adina to come over. As she arrives, Ken takes her little hand and places it in the same grip as the one he has on her mother’s.

“I realize that the was a man who was standing in my position who made promises that he didn’t honor. That hurts, and that’s okay, as long as we don’t let it affect our future. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know if you know this, Adina. I’ve told your mother, but I don’t think I ever told you. A long time ago, I was supposed to be a daddy…”

Ken’s voice softens. He is about to open a door that he slammed shut almost 25 years ago. In that quarter of a century he had opened that door exactly once. That was to Kyra. It was a moment of weakness the first time he opened that door. This time, it felt different. He was about to open that door and share what was behind it. with young Adina, in a moment of strength.

“I have a sister?”

“No, baby.”

“A brother?”

Ken shakes his head. It was time. “No, baby. When I was younger, my fiancee was pregnant. She was in a car accident and died before she could have the baby…”

Ken’s eyes tear up. He wasn’t going to give Adina all the gory details, but it was still enough for him to relive those same gory details.

“That’s why you and your mother are so special to me. You are my family. I would never leave you…” Ken looks over at Kyra. “Neither of you.”

Kyra’s eyes are glassy when she finally looks up into Ken’s eyes, and then over at Adina – and was surprised to see tears streaming down the little girl’s face.

“Aww, baby girl…”

Kyra pulls Adina into a hug as she holds Ken’s hand. There wasn’t anything Kyra could say to her to change what’s already happened. She was so wrapped up in how she felt about it that she’d never realized how it affected Adina.

“I’m sorry, Baby girl. I’m so sorry.”

For Ken, this was it. This was his happy place. Even in the sadness of the moment, he was able to appreciate the happiness in having forged a love so endless, a bond so deep, that he could even have moments like this.

“I’m not just marrying your mom, you know. By marrying your mother, I am accepting you as my daughter. I am telling the world how much I love the two of you. I know you’ve been let down before… both of you have. It’s okay to be sad that you never got to wear the other dress and it’s okay to be scared because there are other people who have left before I got her. When you start feeling like that, come and talk to me. Your mom and I have a show on Monday and then we’re home until we go on the honeymoon..”

Even with tears streaming down her little face, Adina let out a little squeal and pried herself out-of Kyras grip, only to wrap her little arms around Ken’s neck. Ken closes his eyes, a soft smile on his lips.

“I like it when you’re home!”

Adina says excitedly.

“So do I, baby girl.” Ken says, fighting back tears as he gently repeats the words. “So do I.”

On this GORGEOUS (albeit humid as FUCK) day in Baltimore, we find Kyra Johnson and Ken Davison as they putter on about the Chesapeake Bay on a small boat. Ken’s in the rear, wearing a pair of swim shorts and an orange ‘Baltimore Elite’ t-shirt with a matching floppy hat on his head while Kyra’s laid out on the center seat in a pair of short jean shorts and a tropical patterned bikini top, just basking in the sun. Behind the camera, small sounds of a child playing can be heard.

“Take that you scallywag!”

“Adina..” Kyra says quietly, a smirk on her lips.

“Sorry Mommy, I know, I know… You’re talkin to the people you gonna beat up.”

Kyra sits up and removes her sunglasses.

“We won’t be long, sweetie. Hey boys.” She turns her attention towards and gives the camera a wink. “I suppose you’re expecting Ken and I here to talk a bunch of shit about how the two of you are jokes, or how the Cooperative Champions shouldn’t have to go dumpster diving just to get a match around here, but Ken and I here, we’re in a good mood this week. That and we know better than to overlook anyone, even if they’re you two.”

“Dark Destroyer and Captain 80’s, I don’t know if you are aware, but there is an old saying, ‘Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.’ The thing about the two of you is I don’t think that you are actually idiots. Do I think that the two of you are crazy? Yes, batshit crazy, in fact. But, I think you are crazy like a fox, not crazy like a deranged circus clown on dog food.”

Kyra grins back at Ken.

“I think most everyone around here overlooks people too much, especially people like you. But for all we know, you could come out there on Monday and wipe the mat with our fucking faces.”

“Orange Word” Adina mutters from behind the camera. Kyra shoots her a look, and shakes her head.

“Personally, I don’t plan on letting that happen but dare I say.. Crazier things have happened.”

“This is a trap match. Kyra and I have been dominant within the cooperative division, with our only loss coming in a match where we weren’t involved in the fall. If we were to walk into this match thinking we’ve got this in the bag, so to speak, then we are setting ourselves up to take the fall. That’s not who we are. You know who we are? We are the Kendamned UGWC Cooperative Champions!”

Ken pauses, dropping all of the bravado. Kyra nods.

“When Carnage closed, we knew that wherever we went we were gonna end up being the underdogs. And when we came here, that’s exactly what we were. Everyone thought that watching that match between Ken and I.. and Incendium at Incursion, they thought that they were just getting another pair of chumps that weren’t gonna do anything of consequence. We proved them wrong real quick though, didn’t we?”

“Then there was the great Donovan Hastings and…” Ken snaps his fingers, trying to remember Dave Rydell’s name. “And that other guy. After that, we had the Piercing Media Empire. We went into both of those matches as the underdogs. We went into those matches as the underdogs despite being the Cooperative Champions. How the fuck does that happen?”

“Hellllooooooo Orange Word.Again.”

“Hellllooooo” Ken returns fire. “Grown ass man!” Ken shakes his head. “Jesus.”

Kyra can’t stifle a chuckle, but she quickly recovers and peers back into the lens.

“We don’t like being overlooked. We don’t like being underestimated. Maybe you two don’t either, I don’t know. But the ball is in your court, guys. It’s up to you to stand up on your own two feet and show us and everyone else that you’re more than what everyone else says. The bar in the Cooperative division IS us. And only you can send the message that you belong here too. And if you don’t? Well it’s simply onto the next challenge for us.”

Kyra shrugs her shoulders.

“But hey, you guys wanna make even more of a splash?” She gives Ken a knowing look.

“Here is what we want to do, but before I put this out there, I want the two of you to realize that this is not for you. This is for us. “The Jawdropper” and the GKD, “Godly” Ken Davison… we’re fighters. We want our opponents to bring their best each and every Kendamned match. Which means that Captain 80s, Dark Destroyer, it might just be your lucky day. What we would like to do, pending management approval, mind you, is offer the two of you an opportunity at the UGWC Cooperative championships.”

“Because if you haven’t figured it out yet.. We’re fighting champions. We wanna beat all of ya’ll for these belts. Might make us seem a bit… Vain. A little egotistical. I don’t know. But we’re just passionate and we love a good fight. Just please…” Kyra grins and points at her face. “Don’t mess up this butterface too badly. Getting married in about a week and I’d hate to make the pictures even worse.”

Ken rolls his eyes.

“Did you really just say that? Like, what’s wrong with my face?”

“Nothin’s wrong with your face, Daddy.” Adina chimes in again.

“All kidding aside. We’re not fighting champions. We are fighters. Period. End of story. Whether or not the powers that be allow us to defend the belts or not, the one thing that is certain is that when the Baltimore Elite come to fight, We are going to do the same thing to the two of you that we have done to each and every opponent that we have faced. We are going to get in your face. We are going to beat the piss out of you. Then we will put you down. For us, this is nothing more than a business transaction.”

“Come Monday… the shop is open for business.”

“And business is good.”

Another wink from Kyra as she blows a kiss at the camera before the scene fades out.