You can't see anything if you're staring at yesterday....

[Melinda Rhodes]

The Rebel starts things off simply enough with her in a quiet room seated in a folding steel chair and hunched forward. She's sporting a plaid red and black long sleeve shirt, black tank top, blue jeans, spiked bracers on her wrist, chain belt around her hips with a massive "REBEL" belt buckle, and buckled ankle boots. Her tattooed hands are clasped and drooped between slightly spread legs, elbows at rest on her knees. Long raven black locks with blond streaks frame her face. Surely some people were still getting used to her with long, luxurious hair on her head again like the good old days, but here we are.

Jason Anderson.... The Boss... He was there for my last day on the job at Parabellum 2023. The man got to see my fall up close and personal, even outlasting me by a fair clip in the competition that followed. Good job on that, by the by. Who knows how it would've gone if you faced me full on, 100% but that's how it goes when somebody burns that candle at both ends like I did. You've done well for yourself since, Jason and had clearly come a long ways from when we first met all those years prior.

She smiles with a nod.

It's the past now, all behind me. The only question is, am I better than I was at my best or have I lost a step? You've been going like a machine ever since, Jason. A broken man by your own admission, but someone who doesn't have much to lose and plenty to gain. I guess you could say the same about me though. Win? Lose? What's it matter in this instance to people like us who just want to go out and have a good old fight with familiar knuckles caressing our cheeks at high speed, hmm?

Mel sits up and slaps her hands on her knees.

Goddamn it's good to be back in the Brawl neighborhood. When I popped up in the locker room though, I felt like an old gal walking around a remodeled neighborhood. Sure there's some familiar faces there, like Chels, Bullet, Caleb, El Capitan, Jojo, and ol' Amis, but I see alotta people gone and in their place only a few new faces. Change is a scary thing and Brawl's seen alotta change since I vanished from the landscape. More than a few, I miss... maybe there's one or two I don't, but even then it feels so strange not seeing them here. It's good that you're here and facing me, Jason. You may have thought you were a deadman walking last month, but you're still moving forward, still trying, still fighting, living, and dying by your honor and respect and that's a hell of alot better than me.

A flash of regret crosses her face.

I was careless at Parabellum... letting emotions get the better of me and feeling all the wrong things going into that. I yearned for a Brawl that was, wanting to feel that one moment of my greatest triumph again and how can we see what's coming when we're looking over our shoulders at yesterday? I closed my eyes and paid for it in the worst way. You saw it with your own two eyes and yet here I am doing what I always do, defying odds and nature itself because I simply refuse to stay dead. I'm healed up and at Gambit, I showed I can still move and go. Now we're back together again in the ring and I'm not looking at the past wishing for what was, I'm looking for what's gonna be and what's gonna be? Well... let's find out.

Wish a wink and the click of her tongue behind grinning teeth, she lifts her arm and points two fingers at the screen. Cocking her thumb back, she snaps it forward but there's no sound effect. She just chuckles, rises from her chair, and walks out of frame, the frame fading to black.