KD's theme fades out as Cort Marshall eases to his feet. Cort motions to the ref, who brings him his tag title and a mic. Cort throws the belt over his shoulder and begins to speak at a measured pace.

Cort: As you can probably tell, things haven't been going so well for me lately.

The crowd cheers to that, but Cort doesn't let it phase him, continuing.

Cort: First of all, they who shall not be named get their dumb asses fired, leaving our faction without leadership.

Cort: Whatever, we can make it work. After all, I still got my ever-reliable tag partner to back me up, right?

Cort: Wrong. Ed gets his ass sacked too. This band of brothers that I put my blood sweat and tears into turns out to be a charade, a front, a “kingdom” of COWARDS who couldn't get it done the American way.

As Cort goes on, he gets more worked up, letting more emotion into his voice, and the crowd gets rowdier as well.

Cort: I know you might not think I've got a leg to stand on. Maybe I don't.

Cort: I play dirty.

Cort: You all know that.

Cort: I'm a low down cheating son of a bitch.

Cort: I've got ten fingers and each one of them has been in somebody's eye since I started here a year back.

Cort: But I don't promise anything else.

Cort: You look at me, you know what you've got. You've got one tough son of a bitch.

Cort: One mean son of a bitch.

Cort: One son of a BITCH who is willing to fight for everything, tooth and nail. I didn't get handed anything.

Cort: People here don't like me. Hell, nobody likes me. But until a few days ago, I thought I had gotten them to respect me.

Cort points at the camera and raises his voice.

Cort: Big Idiot , you disrespected me. Blonde Whore, you disrespected me. Mixed Raced Loser, you disrespected me.

Cort: I thought I could be proud of my title.

Cort: I thought I could be proud of the man I fought beside.

Cort: But it turns out you valued your own ego more than you valued the competition this sport is BUILT on.

Cort: That this COUNTRY was built on! That foundation, that free market of skill, baby, that is what O-C-W and U-S-A stand for! And you stepped all over it.

Cort holds the belt overhead U.S.A Chants start to ring out. The crowd is eating it up at this point, shocked by the uncharacteristically candid slant of this promo.

Cort: Your cowardice rendered this title meaningless. It's a trinket. Because every step of the way, I wasn't winning because of effort.

Cort: Because of skill. I wasn't winning because me or my partner deserved it.

Cort: I was winning because of your bullshit. Now instead of proudly walking down that ramp knowing I AM a champion, I walk down the ramp feeling like I was robbed of my own accomplishment.

Cort paces.

Cort: More than that, YOU were robbed. Every single one of you in the audience, love me or hate me—and I know most of you hate me—come here to see wrestling.

Cort: To see competition.

Cort: To see hard-fought victories and hard-done-by underdogs and hard hits to the head!

Cort: But it turns out what you've been seeing is the wrestling world's oldest vice sticking a rotting hand out of the grave and grasping feebly for gold it doesn't deserve.

Cort: It turns out all you've been seeing is a goddamn sham! Hurts, don't it?

Cort sighs, stopping his pacing in the middle of the ring.

Cort: And you aren't the only ones.

Cort: Tobin... KD...

He points to the ramp.

Cort: Baker... H2O...

Cort: And even those costumed fools with easter bunny fetishes.

Cort: Every single one of you was cheated out of a fair fight for the belts.

Cort: As much as I hate all of you, and as much as I hate to admit it, that doesn't sit right with me.

Cort: I can't be proud of being a tag champion--I cannot BE a champion--without knowing that I did it myself.

Cort: So as of this moment...

Cort pushes the belt into the shocked referee’s hands.

Cort: The OCW tag team championships are vacated. Bad Company is no more. Congrats, SHITHEADS!!, you win.

Cort: Your precious “legacy” is cemented as the guy who tainted three titles and countless careers.

Cort: Give ‘em back to the DOP, hold ‘em up over a match, I don’t care. I’ll have them again, the right way.

Cort motions to the crowd, and Christian Shepherd emerges, entering the ring.

Cort: Because I have a new tag partner, and we are going to take those belts the way it should have been done the first time! From this moment on...

He turns to Shepherd.

Cort: We are AWOL.

Cort: And we are going to make OCW knows for damn sure that we deserve to be here.

Cort: Not because of anybody else greasing the wheels, not because of under the table coward bullshit, but because we are FIGHTERS.

Cort: And we do what we do day in and day out, night after night, no nonsense, no juice, and most importantly...

Cort: No more excuses.

He tosses the mic to Shepherd.

Shep: We both hitched ourselves to the wrong wagon. But we aren't stopping here.

Shep: This isn’t Oregon Trail and we don’t have dysentery. There’s no Game Over for us. We will scratch, claw, and do whatever we have to in order to be the best. 

Shep: Being the best the right way. If I do say so myself you’re all kind of screwed.

Shep: While I’m no roided up giant, I am fast as hell. I know how to fly when I need to and I sure as hell can scrap.

Shep: For everything that I am in the air, Cort can handle himself on the ground. 

Shep: I’d say we’re like shake and bake, but we’re better than that. I bring the lightning, he’s the thunder.

Shep: Right now we’re pissed as hell. We will fight whoever, wherever we have to to prove that we belong at the top of the tag team mountain.

Shep: So all you teams out there know the winds of change are here and losing for all of you is about to become A Way Of Life.

Cort nods enthusiastically, and he and Shep pose in the ring arm-to-arm, soaking up the crowd’s approval for a few moments before heading through the ropes and up the ramp.

H20 vs Bobby Minio

The camera pans to the announce team.

	WHAT A MATCH!
	Holy ****

As the cameras start rolling we find ourselves in a brightly lit hallway with metal walls. Dead center we see a large set of metallic sliding doors.

We suddenly see a person wearing a fedora walking towards the doors. The camera follows them from behind as they reach the door.

They start punching an unseen number combination onto a keypad. They follow it up with a hand scanner and then they remove their hat.

We now see that it is The Lord of the Lariat, the King of Kindness, the Messiah of the Multiverse Mugen who finishes the three step authentication with a retina scan.

A female British voice from the machine reponds with “Welcome, Overlord”.

Mugen smirks as he watches the metallic sliding doors open slowly to reveal the famed secretive “Victorious Valiant Vault V” opens up to the public eyes for the first time ever.

The camera pans to show Mugen walking towards a case that is seemingly empty. He wipes his hand across a panel built into the stand holding the case. The case starts flickering as the camera zooms towards an eager looking Mugen.

When the bright flickering stops we see Mugen reach towards the case which now……..

Mugen: Yeeeeeess…….one of my most prized possessions…..a source of some higher power…….

We see Mugen reach towards something but we are still not able to see what…..

Mugen: For too long, I have been traveling through time and space. Traversing through multiple multiverses that I have exhausted myself of true power. But now………...I will replenish my true power…………...through becoming………….

The camera points to Mugen’s hands as we see beautiful, golden locks of Betterness placed in a wonderfully ornate case lined with 24 karat gold.

Mugen: Better.

Mugen looks at the camera and smirks as the scene fades out.

The camera pans to the announce team.

	GHASTLY FIEND!
	This is the best timeline!

Bertha Stigglitz vs Sentai Hare

The camera pans to the announce team.

	Unreal!
	Woah!

Not Over Yet!