There’s a difference between a meal and a memory.

A real egg, cracked open in the morning, fried on a pan, leaves behind a scent that lingers, a taste that stays with you. An imprint of life that feels earned. Powdered eggs, on the other hand, come sealed in a packet. Dry dust, mixed with water, reconstituted into something that looks close enough.

Soldiers on the line took them because they had to—but nobody ever mistook them for the real thing. They filled the stomach, yes, but they never nourished. They simply reminded every man at the table of what was missing.

That’s what your war has become, Slade. Not the heat of battle, not the crack of the shell, not the real thing that once gave you fire. What you chase now is a substitute.

You scoop dust from a bag, add water, stir it around, and tell yourself it’s the same as before. But every bite betrays you. Every fight you take in Arcadia is just another powdered ration pretending to carry the taste of a war that isn’t here.

Do you notice how hollow it feels? How the chew is dry, how it clings to the roof of your mouth? That is the texture of every battle you’ve fought since the day the guns went silent. You keep swallowing it, convincing yourself the memory is close enough. But deep down, you know. It doesn’t taste the same. It doesn’t feel the same. It can’t.

And that’s why you linger in Old School Wrestling, Slade. You mistake that ring for the skillet, mistake me for the fire, mistake these matches for the sustenance of war. But the truth is simple: this is powdered food, this is a synthetic world, and you’re the only one desperate enough to pretend it’s real.

You sit down in the mess, spoon the dust into your mouth, and try to forget what an actual meal used to be.

But I don’t serve powdered eggs. I don’t traffic in replicas, in rehydrated memories of a war you can’t get back. I serve the real thing—meals with weight, with heat, with depth.

When you step into the ring with me, Slade, you won’t be fooled into thinking you’re back in the trenches. Instead, you’ll be reminded how far you’ve fallen from them. You’ll taste the difference between substance and substitute, between what sustains and what starves.

And when it’s over, you’ll leave with the same taste soldiers always left with after swallowing those powdered eggs: bitterness. The bitterness of knowing you were once fed something real, and now you live off dust.

Because that’s the nourishment you’ve chosen. That’s the sustenance you cling to.

When I’m done, you’ll know for certain—Old School Wrestling is not your battlefield. It’s just another packet torn open, another imitation meal stirred into water. Another fight that could never satisfy a soldier who’s already starved.

And Slade? That hunger will stay with you.