One.
Just one single pang of hunger is all it takes.
Because you feel that pang, and you find something to sate it. A chip, perhaps? You eat the chip, and it feels so fucking good.
But it doesn’t fill you up.
So you eat another chip. And another. Each one slides down the gullet and you begin to wonder if you’ll ever not be hungry. Because the chips aren’t working.
Instead of the pang of hunger going away, it only grows. When you’ve eaten all the chips, you find something else to stuff down your throat. Pizza. Cake. It doesn’t matter.
You can’t stop.
Your mind is consumed with nothing more than thoughts of food. It’s this strange mix of pain, pleasure, and power as nothing can stand in your way. You ignore your growing body, make excuses for devoting your entire life to consumption.
But consume you do, until there’s nothing left of you but that consumption. You’ve let your friends down, and the very thing you gave it all up for no longer gives you comfort.
And you’re all alone.
I get it, Ether. I do.
Food is good, isn’t it? You got that first taste, and decided you were going to eat all the fucking chips in the world.
You let that hunger define you though, and it no longer is restricted to food. You thrive on excess, on gorging yourself with all that you desire until you can’t stand it any longer.
Loud clothes. Louder music. Even louder attitude.
That’s just who you are, the consumer who can’t stop consuming.
But look around you, look at who you’ve become. Abrasive. Angry. Willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want.
Yet you’re still full of shit.
How long have you and Tag been chasing me and Big Z? How long have you wanted the Tag Team titles? You’ve devoted your entire body to consumption, but you can’t consume the very thing that you want.
There’s another thing that consumes though, Ether. Another thing out there that rolls pleasure and pain into one.
Fire.
You lit the spark at Red Snow, and I got that single taste of you.
It was all I needed.
I beat you once, then again. And again. Each victory over you didn’t even begin to satiate my hunger. So I turned to other things.
Triosmania. Invasion.
I burned them all down, consuming them into my firestorm. Foe after foe fell to that wildfire, and it has covered OSW with its flames.
And I can’t stop.
Can’t stop winning. Can’t stop conquering.
I tried to ignore the feeling, but I’m tired of it.
Just like I’m tired of you.
I see you there, trying your damndest to not let Tag down, but you already have. Your devotion to doing anything but winning has let both Tag and Wiz down, and even these tag team titles won’t give you comfort.
Because you’re all alone, a soon-to-be burning effigy to excessive consumption. A funeral pyre to the woman you could have been.
But I’ll be there, Ether. I’m always there.
All that remains.