The screen morphed from black to white in an instant before the true image in front of the camera came slowly into focus. Mountains covered in luscious greenery stretched upwards all around to touch the cloudless blue sky. There in the middle of said sky hung that big, fiery bastard otherwise known as the sun, and like the dick he usually is in summer, he threw down rays of light harder than Zeus slings bolts of lightning.

“See this?” Asked an exhausted voice from out of shot, “This... is where I... I grew up. This is where... where I come from.”

The voice, although raspy and broken up from heavy laboured breathing, sounded familiar. Although it’s producer’s throat almost certainly required some form of moisture and plenty of it.

“Sure...” Panted the voice, “Sure I’ve never really gotten out here much... Jesus christ!”

The camera spun round to reveal a beetroot.

Ok, not quite.

The camera did spin round, and now occupying the screen where the beautiful mountains once were was indeed something that looked remarkably like a beetroot, but it was in fact Eugene Dewey, his cheeks were as previously described and his brow dripped as though the ginger jewfro atop his head were in fact a tiny little storm cloud.

“It’s now...” Said Eugene as he squinted to look at his watch and raised his eyebrows in disbelief, “Two forty-seven? How the hell did that happen?”

“I think I’m about... six miles west of Buffalo... But still, this is where I come from, Frank.” He said adamantly. “We’re both mountain men, you and I, but we've treated these peaks very, very differently.”

“While you wandered around the wilderness slinging bags full of your own crap into ravines, and hardening the skin on your feet to the point where you could chip the stone you walked on. I went to school, and sat in my nice warm house playing hour after hour of Contra." Eugene said. He paused for a second to reminisce about the days where he and his brother would spend hour upon hour blasting their way through the NES classic. “Your years of physical labour may mean I don’t have the same kind of conditioning as you do.”

“And I may not be as strong... or as fast... or be able to take, nor dish out, as much punishment as...” Eugene continued, slowing down his speech after each point before coming to an abrupt stop. “But... Uhh....”

Panic flooded Eugene’s face as his mouth hung open and his eyes widened as he realised just what he was preparing to face in his next match.

“Ummm...” He hesitated to say, “But... what I do have...”

Eugene scanned his surroundings and racked his brain for any kind of possible inspiration that may hint at one possible edge he could lord over Frank Dylan James.

“I... have...” He said slowly, “I have...”

He mouthed to himself ‘trees?’ ‘plants?’... 'dirt?'

"I have..." He sighed heavily, "Nothing."

Eugene looked ashamedly at the ground in defeat.

"I have nothing on you." He admitted reluctantly, “Just like I have nothing when it comes to the upcoming WarGames match.”

“Now, I have no idea what happened on the last Heritage show, and apparently Wayne needed the space on the Tivo to record reruns of ‘Desperate Housewives’, so I’ve got no way of finding out...” Said Eugene through gritted teeth, “But believe me, I’m going to do anything I can to find out what happened this week. I swear, I’m going to get to the bottom of why I’ve been kicked out of the WarGames tournament for something so monumentally stupid!”

Eugene closed his eyes took a lungfull of mountain air to calm himself.

“Whatever happened though, whatever the reason was that caused me to fail the test, I’ve let a lot of people down.” Eugene continued, “I’ve let everyone in Defiance down, I’ve let Cito Connari down, I’ve let my mom down, and most of all... I’ve let myself down.”

Clearly it pained him to admit that, but he pressed on regardless “All I can do now is try to redeem myself, prove my worth to every single person that’s been let down by my actions...” Eugene said, “So, Frank, you might be fighting this week because you want to, but I’m fighting because I need to.”

“Frank, you can be statistically better than me in every way, but my need to win this week... that’s more powerful than anything you can bring.”
 

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