Post by Michael Callahan on Jun 25, 2012 18:42:48 GMT -4
Beating down on the Rockaway Skate Park, the roasting hot late-June sun cooks the locals of the Queens borough of New York something crispy round about the 2PM mark of the day. While everybody's favourite synthetic blonde born again street thug Benny Horrowitz is chilling on the edge of a half pipe smoking a joint and talking to some old friends the park is a real hive of activity as a whole socio-cultural tangle of urban youth hit the ramp. It's the kind of image that you'd imagine Michael Callahan's grinning and beaming in front of like he's on the cusp of gentle orgasm, trying to convince minority voters that he's home with the downies. Alas though, this is no fish out of water story but merely Benny basking where he feels most comfortable despite having no knowledge of skateboards whatsoever.
Benny's reason for being here were simple. He had to rediscover himself, rediscover his roots and rebuild an entire new way of life for himself because the path he was walking as the NY Shogun was bleak, dangerous and stupid. Some kid no older than eight years old pulls off a kick-flip before grinning like the Cheshire Cat at the camera, looking for approval. With two friends eitherside of Benny as the camera guy walks to him, he immediately disregards his friends and walks right towards the camera with weariness hanging like drapes from his worn features. He's not in the best of ways, that much is obvious but having spent some quality time just being himself and enjoying the heat he's happy enough to address the world and to do that, he's gonna' start by giving someone thanks. A feat which he'd never accomplished before in his life.
”I wanna say a little thank you to a certain special someone out there. There's a very important person in my life right now who deserves my utmost thanks right now and I feel it's important they get the credit deserve. Nah, it ain't Dita Morgan. That girl has been a rock for me while I was in the hospital getting patched but that's not who I need to thank. It's actually my boy, The Wolf Assemblage, Cammy Wolves. Now you probably thinking, why should I be thanking the man that beat me black and blue, had me in a No-Disqualification match that nearly got my ass zapped to death and torched something crispy in pyro and otherwise been making my life a misery? Because this boy helped me realise sense like nobody else could. The whole “Reevaluate your whole life” type of shit.”
Benny thanking anybody but himself seems ludicrous enough but for him to thank his worst enemy is almost maddeningly beyond comprehension. Of course, the smooth-talking street kid isn't about to go and thank the current thorn in his side without some explanation as to why. His thanks is sincere and not laced with sarcasm as you'd expect from a man who's early career was built off of mocking shop assistants.
”See, back when I first heard Cammy talking the talk about me saying how I was this stupid thug and that I was a fool, blind to everything around me and obsessed by my own ego I laughed at him. I thought it was a joke, some new kid trying to infringe of my turf doing whatever it took to look like a big shot in his five minutes of fame before the Kung Do Killah knocked him down a peg. I thought it was jokes. I'd never laughed that hard in my life, not since my fourth grade teacher Ms. Valentine told me I'd never amount to nothin'. Then after I got my career ended and killed by a reckless Shotgun Knee that looked to cook the both of us, I came to realise that this crazy dude might actually have a point.”
Benny starts walking across the half-pipe now towards the camera and the camera follows suit. Skaters flank around him as he casually makes his way through the skate zone with the quiet confidence of the phantom who knows that the skaters will literally just pass through him if they collide.
”As I lay there, starin' up at the ceiling barely able to move from the sheer pain, EMT's rushin' to see to me all I could think of was how that was just the icing on the cake of the reckless life that I been living. Since I was thirteen years old I'd been runnin' with gangs, skippin' school, takin' coke, doin' what I had to to make ends meet and just being a total menace wherever I could. I wasn't making my family proud, I wasn't making myself proud. The only people proud of me were the ones who were benefitting from my corruption and my stupidity. Cameron Wolves made me realise how shitty I was for wasting my life the way I had done and that's why I have to thank you. You were right about me. Ms. Valentine is still a punk bitch though.”[/B]
Thinking back to that fateful episode of Meltdown where an overzealous Shotgun Knee nearly cost them both their careers and lives is a painful memory for Benny who has to bite his lip so as not to let the inner-emotion betray the cool, collected aura he's exuding. While the scars may be fading, the images and the screams of terror from the Meltdown audience still haunt his dreams each and every night. There's no medication, no pharmaceutical for such trauma. Only time, the healer of all wounds.
”Y'see I came to realise that being the big shot ain't all it's cracked up to be. I can talk the talk like nobody else can but when it came to walking the walk, I wasn't all I cracked myself up to be and I had no ambitions to change that. I just figured I'd get my boys to back me and reach that extra mile where I couldn't rather than working harder, focusing and being better. Well now that's all changed. I knew I had to get back in touch with who I really am rather than the pretender that I thought gangster rap and my home environment wanted to be.”
Growing up on nothing but kung fu flicks, Wu Tang albums and a society built upon resentment of the establishment and authority will no doubt play tricks on a man's mind. Even the staunchest of biological psychologists who believe our behaviour is pre-determined can't deny the irrefutable evidence that your up-bringing, where you live and who your parents are will have a huge effect on the man or woman you will become. Benny knows this but accepts with a heavy heart that he can change, he can rise out of his origins if he wants it badly enough.
”So I revisited the streets that I grew up on and had a long think. All my life I thought I'd been living the street life, peddling drugs and being loud. I thought I was pumping new blood into the hearts of these city streets but I wasn't, I was rotting away it's veins with my negative, destructive behaviour. Instead of trying to deny my roots and strip “da ghetto” out of me, I discovered what the streets was all about. That's why I'm here, at Rockaway Skate Park in Queens. I can't skate for shit but the urban culture that lives and breathes in place like this, it's what I should be trying to get in touch with rather than the crack and cat houses that I used to build out of bricks made of bone and mortar from the blood and suffering of these city people.”
Deliberate vagueness prevents Benny from alluding to a life of true, unhinged decadence that horror stories and rap lyrics are written about. To achieve even a marginal amount of success in such a depraved and deprived society Benny had to break a lot of fingers and climb a mountain of bodies before he could cut out a life worth living for himself. Backstabbing and desperation is the order of the day in the street canteens for a poor, urban youth with no education, no prospects and no future.
”And this all applies to my career as a wrestler. Instead of trying to destroy Meltdown and make it my stomping grounds like I tried to do in Queens, I'mma try and breathe life into the streets and bring colour and light to the melting pot of morally ambiguous crooks that populate the roster today. Your Evan Envi's, your Yarmouth's, all these bad dudes who wanna be the guy and don't care about the bigger picture. The only way I can achieve this goal is through hard work, focus, determination and appreciation of the beauty of in-ring competition. That's what I gotta' do, that's who I gotta' be if I wanna be remembered.”
Desire to be remembered and to achieve something has always been a dream of Benny's but it's not until becoming a wrestler that Benny realised that there's a key difference between being remembered for the good things you did and being remembered for all the lives you ruined. It's critical life lessons like this that Benny learnt through his body wrecking, traumatising plunge off the edge of the Meltdown stage.
”It's hard work and graft that's gonna' achieve the goals I wanna do. I was in the dojo today with my old sensei for the first time in months and I can honestly swear down I never got my ass kicked so hard. I got a lump on my leg the size of a golf ball from getting the shit low kicked outta' me but I feel better because of it. I'm way way way out of practice but I'mma make it back to the level I once was so I can kick some ass. I've also been training parkour with some cats I used to run with back in the day and man, those dudes can fly. It's crazy but even though I was in a life threatening situation two weeks ago, I don't feel pain. I feel physically, mentally, spiritually refreshed and that? Well that's dangerous.”
Having walked off the half pipe he turns and sees a nearby bowl. Dropping in with a running start, the camera follows in as he runs up the wall and performs a picture perfect back flip back into the centre with all the grace and style of a Russian gymnast. He then does a Michael Jordan-esque leap to the edge of the bowl, complete with cat grab and pulls himself out as quickly as he dropped in. Carrying on as if nothing happens, his expression turns a pleasant tide of calm once more as he returns to discussing his nemesis.
”Cameron Wolves, you're blessed. Really you are. If this were any other dude you'd be teaming with then you'd have something to worry about with this peculiar set of circumstances. I mean yeah, me and Dita have... “a thing” as everyone describes it. A friendship, which seems to be in some sort of limbo of the “Will They? Won't They?” variety. Iunno what it is, I'm not really good with talking about feelings and all that shit but the point I'm tryna' make is that I won't let it hold me back. Natch, I'm not gonna' throw the lady off the stage like I did to both of us the other week but at the same time if it comes to showing her the sharp end of my knee to put this match to bed then that's the price we pay of being in this business.”
Benny's limitless desire to win might be the only thing that's not changed about the ballsy young kid from Manhattan but the methods in which he'll seek to accomplish victory will almost certainly have. He flicks away the dregs of his joint into the distance, watching as some kid.
”But this ain't over. You keep runnin' your mouth even though you know you can't put this boy down and think it makes you some kinda' badass. Deep down inside I think we're destined to keep drawing. You can't lock up with the demons inside your mind which stops you from achieving your full potential and I simply can not be held back by anyone or anything making us Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object style material. I of course, am the immovable object. I know you won't give up. Neither will I. That's what links us together and it's what is gonna' help us beat Shadow and Dita this week because what we don't have in “chemistry”, we have in raw ability, determination and commitment to our goals. That's the only connection we have and it's gonna' be the catalyst for our success this week.”
Despite the brutal attacks he's suffered thanks to his arch-rival on Meltdown, Benny's developed a respect for the very dangerous, very dominant nature in which Wolves has conducted his business before. Never has a family name been so appropriate as with Cameron due to his capabilities, almost like a One Man Wolfpack. Vicious, correlated, violent. It's all part of the package of immense tools that Wolves possesses.
”Now I wanna talk about Dita. Sweet, sweet Dita. It'll be cool to see if I can handle a match with you without wanting to kick your ass afterwards. Haha, nah, jokes aside you know as well as I do that I'm a different guy to the one who gave you the welcoming committee way back when the brand started. It's gonna' be difficult facing someone who you give a shit about though. I don't have a problem mixing it up with most of the people here on Meltdown but to be destructive towards someone who's been so constructive in making me the man I am today? That's gonna' be hard, I know it'll be hard for you too but you know how bad I want to win, how I'm going to bring my A-game and be the best that I can be. I just hope that one way or the other, we're still cool about it because no matter what way our “thing” goes, you're good people to be around.”
Pausing for a moment he almost drifts off into an abstract fantasy world as he pictures the girl for whom he holds a very bright, very burning torch for. Just thinking of her auburn her, her slender frame and her creamy skin gets his heart racing. Then add to that her down to earth personality and of course that irresistibly sexy British accent and when Benny comes back to his senses he finds himself wiping escaped drool from the corner of his mouth, symbolic of how his street smart sensibilities have escaped him since meeting her.
”Now, finally. We get onto Shadow. Say the shit you said about two weeks ago and I'd have made target practice out of your cardboard cut-outs available on APW-shopzone.com. Instead I find myself in total agreement with you. I made some stupid calls. I did some angry, dumb, stupid things and you have every right to be upset that I have the relationship I have with your fancy lady. I get it. Everything you said about me being a player and a hot shot douche bag WAS true, but now it's not. Times be a changin' and I'm a man of integrity now. I'm sure with time you'll come to trust me like Dita did but seeing as I'm directly in the way of your intentions to hook back up with your sweet ex-ladyfriend I can imagine it'll take a while for you to chill out and just be cool with who I am.”
Once again, Benny's motives are true, pure, real. Even though Shadow would quite happily go hell for leather on remodelling the face of the Celestial Samurai, the zenified urbanite who's reimagery seeks to influence the minds of the many, Benny doesn't bare the same malice towards his love rival. Instead he wants to embrace him like a brother for in a sense, they are kin in the way they toil together in suffering under Dita Morgan's charming British spell.
”Hell, who knows Shadow? Maybe one day you and I will be on the level of being able to go out and grab a few bro beers together. … orrrr maybe not but fuck man, somebody gotta' extend the olive branch of peace. All I know is you wanna kick my ass and while I'm with ya' that I deserve it, I'll be damned if I'mma just lay there and let you give it to me. If you get everything you want out of this match then great, if staving my head in makes everything alright for you then I guess it's a price worth paying if it makes us cool if this Dita thing goes anywhere. Otherwise, it's all good competition right? SHO NUFF!”
Benny throws up the East Side sign as the screen fades to black having said everything he needs to say. It's understandable that nobody would trust a man who's first ever appearance in hype footage involved him throwing scalding hot hot chocolate in the general trajectory of a timid, socially insufficient Starbucks employee but having since relinquished the cocaine habit and embraced humanity he looks to really turn himself around. The presence of women can make a man's mind do strange things and change entire world views simply by their aura and no matter how much of a lady killer the former “Sidewinder” might have been, it seems to do nothing as Dita's influence grows on him like moss.
Whether Benny will be able to stick true to his word and undo Dita with his wrestling skills like he said or fall pray to his aching heart remains to be seen however.
FADE.
Benny's reason for being here were simple. He had to rediscover himself, rediscover his roots and rebuild an entire new way of life for himself because the path he was walking as the NY Shogun was bleak, dangerous and stupid. Some kid no older than eight years old pulls off a kick-flip before grinning like the Cheshire Cat at the camera, looking for approval. With two friends eitherside of Benny as the camera guy walks to him, he immediately disregards his friends and walks right towards the camera with weariness hanging like drapes from his worn features. He's not in the best of ways, that much is obvious but having spent some quality time just being himself and enjoying the heat he's happy enough to address the world and to do that, he's gonna' start by giving someone thanks. A feat which he'd never accomplished before in his life.
”I wanna say a little thank you to a certain special someone out there. There's a very important person in my life right now who deserves my utmost thanks right now and I feel it's important they get the credit deserve. Nah, it ain't Dita Morgan. That girl has been a rock for me while I was in the hospital getting patched but that's not who I need to thank. It's actually my boy, The Wolf Assemblage, Cammy Wolves. Now you probably thinking, why should I be thanking the man that beat me black and blue, had me in a No-Disqualification match that nearly got my ass zapped to death and torched something crispy in pyro and otherwise been making my life a misery? Because this boy helped me realise sense like nobody else could. The whole “Reevaluate your whole life” type of shit.”
Benny thanking anybody but himself seems ludicrous enough but for him to thank his worst enemy is almost maddeningly beyond comprehension. Of course, the smooth-talking street kid isn't about to go and thank the current thorn in his side without some explanation as to why. His thanks is sincere and not laced with sarcasm as you'd expect from a man who's early career was built off of mocking shop assistants.
”See, back when I first heard Cammy talking the talk about me saying how I was this stupid thug and that I was a fool, blind to everything around me and obsessed by my own ego I laughed at him. I thought it was a joke, some new kid trying to infringe of my turf doing whatever it took to look like a big shot in his five minutes of fame before the Kung Do Killah knocked him down a peg. I thought it was jokes. I'd never laughed that hard in my life, not since my fourth grade teacher Ms. Valentine told me I'd never amount to nothin'. Then after I got my career ended and killed by a reckless Shotgun Knee that looked to cook the both of us, I came to realise that this crazy dude might actually have a point.”
Benny starts walking across the half-pipe now towards the camera and the camera follows suit. Skaters flank around him as he casually makes his way through the skate zone with the quiet confidence of the phantom who knows that the skaters will literally just pass through him if they collide.
”As I lay there, starin' up at the ceiling barely able to move from the sheer pain, EMT's rushin' to see to me all I could think of was how that was just the icing on the cake of the reckless life that I been living. Since I was thirteen years old I'd been runnin' with gangs, skippin' school, takin' coke, doin' what I had to to make ends meet and just being a total menace wherever I could. I wasn't making my family proud, I wasn't making myself proud. The only people proud of me were the ones who were benefitting from my corruption and my stupidity. Cameron Wolves made me realise how shitty I was for wasting my life the way I had done and that's why I have to thank you. You were right about me. Ms. Valentine is still a punk bitch though.”[/B]
Thinking back to that fateful episode of Meltdown where an overzealous Shotgun Knee nearly cost them both their careers and lives is a painful memory for Benny who has to bite his lip so as not to let the inner-emotion betray the cool, collected aura he's exuding. While the scars may be fading, the images and the screams of terror from the Meltdown audience still haunt his dreams each and every night. There's no medication, no pharmaceutical for such trauma. Only time, the healer of all wounds.
”Y'see I came to realise that being the big shot ain't all it's cracked up to be. I can talk the talk like nobody else can but when it came to walking the walk, I wasn't all I cracked myself up to be and I had no ambitions to change that. I just figured I'd get my boys to back me and reach that extra mile where I couldn't rather than working harder, focusing and being better. Well now that's all changed. I knew I had to get back in touch with who I really am rather than the pretender that I thought gangster rap and my home environment wanted to be.”
Growing up on nothing but kung fu flicks, Wu Tang albums and a society built upon resentment of the establishment and authority will no doubt play tricks on a man's mind. Even the staunchest of biological psychologists who believe our behaviour is pre-determined can't deny the irrefutable evidence that your up-bringing, where you live and who your parents are will have a huge effect on the man or woman you will become. Benny knows this but accepts with a heavy heart that he can change, he can rise out of his origins if he wants it badly enough.
”So I revisited the streets that I grew up on and had a long think. All my life I thought I'd been living the street life, peddling drugs and being loud. I thought I was pumping new blood into the hearts of these city streets but I wasn't, I was rotting away it's veins with my negative, destructive behaviour. Instead of trying to deny my roots and strip “da ghetto” out of me, I discovered what the streets was all about. That's why I'm here, at Rockaway Skate Park in Queens. I can't skate for shit but the urban culture that lives and breathes in place like this, it's what I should be trying to get in touch with rather than the crack and cat houses that I used to build out of bricks made of bone and mortar from the blood and suffering of these city people.”
Deliberate vagueness prevents Benny from alluding to a life of true, unhinged decadence that horror stories and rap lyrics are written about. To achieve even a marginal amount of success in such a depraved and deprived society Benny had to break a lot of fingers and climb a mountain of bodies before he could cut out a life worth living for himself. Backstabbing and desperation is the order of the day in the street canteens for a poor, urban youth with no education, no prospects and no future.
”And this all applies to my career as a wrestler. Instead of trying to destroy Meltdown and make it my stomping grounds like I tried to do in Queens, I'mma try and breathe life into the streets and bring colour and light to the melting pot of morally ambiguous crooks that populate the roster today. Your Evan Envi's, your Yarmouth's, all these bad dudes who wanna be the guy and don't care about the bigger picture. The only way I can achieve this goal is through hard work, focus, determination and appreciation of the beauty of in-ring competition. That's what I gotta' do, that's who I gotta' be if I wanna be remembered.”
Desire to be remembered and to achieve something has always been a dream of Benny's but it's not until becoming a wrestler that Benny realised that there's a key difference between being remembered for the good things you did and being remembered for all the lives you ruined. It's critical life lessons like this that Benny learnt through his body wrecking, traumatising plunge off the edge of the Meltdown stage.
”It's hard work and graft that's gonna' achieve the goals I wanna do. I was in the dojo today with my old sensei for the first time in months and I can honestly swear down I never got my ass kicked so hard. I got a lump on my leg the size of a golf ball from getting the shit low kicked outta' me but I feel better because of it. I'm way way way out of practice but I'mma make it back to the level I once was so I can kick some ass. I've also been training parkour with some cats I used to run with back in the day and man, those dudes can fly. It's crazy but even though I was in a life threatening situation two weeks ago, I don't feel pain. I feel physically, mentally, spiritually refreshed and that? Well that's dangerous.”
Having walked off the half pipe he turns and sees a nearby bowl. Dropping in with a running start, the camera follows in as he runs up the wall and performs a picture perfect back flip back into the centre with all the grace and style of a Russian gymnast. He then does a Michael Jordan-esque leap to the edge of the bowl, complete with cat grab and pulls himself out as quickly as he dropped in. Carrying on as if nothing happens, his expression turns a pleasant tide of calm once more as he returns to discussing his nemesis.
”Cameron Wolves, you're blessed. Really you are. If this were any other dude you'd be teaming with then you'd have something to worry about with this peculiar set of circumstances. I mean yeah, me and Dita have... “a thing” as everyone describes it. A friendship, which seems to be in some sort of limbo of the “Will They? Won't They?” variety. Iunno what it is, I'm not really good with talking about feelings and all that shit but the point I'm tryna' make is that I won't let it hold me back. Natch, I'm not gonna' throw the lady off the stage like I did to both of us the other week but at the same time if it comes to showing her the sharp end of my knee to put this match to bed then that's the price we pay of being in this business.”
Benny's limitless desire to win might be the only thing that's not changed about the ballsy young kid from Manhattan but the methods in which he'll seek to accomplish victory will almost certainly have. He flicks away the dregs of his joint into the distance, watching as some kid.
”But this ain't over. You keep runnin' your mouth even though you know you can't put this boy down and think it makes you some kinda' badass. Deep down inside I think we're destined to keep drawing. You can't lock up with the demons inside your mind which stops you from achieving your full potential and I simply can not be held back by anyone or anything making us Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object style material. I of course, am the immovable object. I know you won't give up. Neither will I. That's what links us together and it's what is gonna' help us beat Shadow and Dita this week because what we don't have in “chemistry”, we have in raw ability, determination and commitment to our goals. That's the only connection we have and it's gonna' be the catalyst for our success this week.”
Despite the brutal attacks he's suffered thanks to his arch-rival on Meltdown, Benny's developed a respect for the very dangerous, very dominant nature in which Wolves has conducted his business before. Never has a family name been so appropriate as with Cameron due to his capabilities, almost like a One Man Wolfpack. Vicious, correlated, violent. It's all part of the package of immense tools that Wolves possesses.
”Now I wanna talk about Dita. Sweet, sweet Dita. It'll be cool to see if I can handle a match with you without wanting to kick your ass afterwards. Haha, nah, jokes aside you know as well as I do that I'm a different guy to the one who gave you the welcoming committee way back when the brand started. It's gonna' be difficult facing someone who you give a shit about though. I don't have a problem mixing it up with most of the people here on Meltdown but to be destructive towards someone who's been so constructive in making me the man I am today? That's gonna' be hard, I know it'll be hard for you too but you know how bad I want to win, how I'm going to bring my A-game and be the best that I can be. I just hope that one way or the other, we're still cool about it because no matter what way our “thing” goes, you're good people to be around.”
Pausing for a moment he almost drifts off into an abstract fantasy world as he pictures the girl for whom he holds a very bright, very burning torch for. Just thinking of her auburn her, her slender frame and her creamy skin gets his heart racing. Then add to that her down to earth personality and of course that irresistibly sexy British accent and when Benny comes back to his senses he finds himself wiping escaped drool from the corner of his mouth, symbolic of how his street smart sensibilities have escaped him since meeting her.
”Now, finally. We get onto Shadow. Say the shit you said about two weeks ago and I'd have made target practice out of your cardboard cut-outs available on APW-shopzone.com. Instead I find myself in total agreement with you. I made some stupid calls. I did some angry, dumb, stupid things and you have every right to be upset that I have the relationship I have with your fancy lady. I get it. Everything you said about me being a player and a hot shot douche bag WAS true, but now it's not. Times be a changin' and I'm a man of integrity now. I'm sure with time you'll come to trust me like Dita did but seeing as I'm directly in the way of your intentions to hook back up with your sweet ex-ladyfriend I can imagine it'll take a while for you to chill out and just be cool with who I am.”
Once again, Benny's motives are true, pure, real. Even though Shadow would quite happily go hell for leather on remodelling the face of the Celestial Samurai, the zenified urbanite who's reimagery seeks to influence the minds of the many, Benny doesn't bare the same malice towards his love rival. Instead he wants to embrace him like a brother for in a sense, they are kin in the way they toil together in suffering under Dita Morgan's charming British spell.
”Hell, who knows Shadow? Maybe one day you and I will be on the level of being able to go out and grab a few bro beers together. … orrrr maybe not but fuck man, somebody gotta' extend the olive branch of peace. All I know is you wanna kick my ass and while I'm with ya' that I deserve it, I'll be damned if I'mma just lay there and let you give it to me. If you get everything you want out of this match then great, if staving my head in makes everything alright for you then I guess it's a price worth paying if it makes us cool if this Dita thing goes anywhere. Otherwise, it's all good competition right? SHO NUFF!”
Benny throws up the East Side sign as the screen fades to black having said everything he needs to say. It's understandable that nobody would trust a man who's first ever appearance in hype footage involved him throwing scalding hot hot chocolate in the general trajectory of a timid, socially insufficient Starbucks employee but having since relinquished the cocaine habit and embraced humanity he looks to really turn himself around. The presence of women can make a man's mind do strange things and change entire world views simply by their aura and no matter how much of a lady killer the former “Sidewinder” might have been, it seems to do nothing as Dita's influence grows on him like moss.
Whether Benny will be able to stick true to his word and undo Dita with his wrestling skills like he said or fall pray to his aching heart remains to be seen however.
FADE.
