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+--- Thread: Knights of Future Past (/showthread.php?tid=1289)
Knights of Future Past - KnightMask - 03-08-2013
Pinned beneath 405 pounds of metal, the wrestler called KnightMask called upon his strength, his passion, his faith and his soul. In a single, primal growl, he pitted them against the rusting steel barbell and its cast iron plates.
There was a collision, strength and will, steel and gravity.
The bar exploded off the wrestler's chest, ascending up, up and up until his arms straightened and then fell slightly back, dropping the bar onto the rack above him. The effort left his head light and his vision a haze. The will and the spirit had triumphed, but even in defeat, steel and gravity had extracted a toll.
Kick Axe's 'Hunger' pounded his ears as he staggered off of the bench, towards the pull-up bar. He broke into a run, flinging his body into the air and catching the bar in his hands. With a grunt, he pulled his chin up to the bar, then past it, until his arms were extended underneath him and he was looking down at the rest of the gym. Keeping his arms straight, he raised his body up, then his legs followed. He held the handstand on the pull-up bar for a second, then commenced into inverted push-ups before falling back into a hang and repeating the motion.
"Wow...was he always that strong....?" a young wrestler asked, as he watched the XWF star's training, his mouth agape in awe.
"No, no...." answered a woman's voice, "He wasn't."
The trainee turned to see a woman standing next to him. Her face was sharp featured and high cheek-boned but also soft and nearly round in its shape; the black silken hair that framed it reached down to the middle of her legs, legs whose power was apparent even beneath a thick layer of soft, smooth bronze skin.
Her dark, almond eyes somberly almost sadly observed KnightMask's. She had the look as if she was watching something intimately familiar to her, almost the look that his mom used to have when she watched him play.
"So...how did he become like he is now?"
"Through pain. Lots and lots of pain...”
The trainee looked questioningly at the beautiful stranger to the gym, who seemed to know so much about KnightMask.
“His brother, his uncles, his cousins, his father...all of them were wrestlers. The Charging Bulls were the top wrestling team in the state most years and even when they weren't, they were the most feared.
“Tyrone...he preferred to draw, to read comic-books, play with action figures...he loved the superheroes. For as long as I can remember, he loved superheroes. While other people in Sparta were looking up to all the top wrestling stars, Tyrone was looking to Spiderman and Batman as his role models.
“But when his cousin Roland, strong, athletic and trained as a wrestler, continually beat and humiliated him, his world of fantasy was shattered. How could he fancy himself a superhero, when he was getting beaten up and humiliated on a regular basis? And so he found himself on the wrestling mats. I remember when he and his older brother used to run around the track...he wasn't in shape and he couldn't run very fast. So his brother would chase after him, forcing him to run. Whenever there was a race, his older brother would wait at the finish line. When KnightMask--or I guess I should say, Tyrone, back then-- reached the finish line, he would knock him over before he could pass it. He was trying to make him stronger, I guess.”
The woman looked over at KnightMask, who had taken to the Olympic rings, where he held himself aloft in an iron cross.
“Tyrone didn't win much. Not as a child. In fact, for a long time, he never won. Every time he stepped onto the mat, he was simply bowled over by the anger, the cruelty and the intensity of his opponents. He lacked a mean streak. He was nice, obliging and almost...submissive. If you didn't know better, you'd think he wasn't trying, but that wasn't it. He was trying the hardest of all of them. But he wasn’t training because he wanted to be able to assert dominance over others or because he wanted to hurt people. “
Dropping from the rings, KnightMask slid into the ring, where a collection of wrestlers awaited him, springing onto the attack as soon as he entered.
“So, why become a wrestler if you don’t want to hurt people? Isn’t that what it’s about? Beating your opponent?”
“Not for Tyrone. I guess in Tyrone’s case…he just wanted to realize his superhero ideal. The other boys in his family had shattered it for him and he wasn’t going to rest until he’d reasserted its truth. Wrestling was his medium for doing that. And I guess it wasn’t a bad fit. The superheroes expressed their heroic qualities through combat, didn’t they?
“Somehow, that desire to live up to the ideal set by a fictional character...it made his goals different. He didn't have the same direction as the other kids, but at the same time, his sense of what was physically possible...wasn't bound by what he saw from his peers, the adults around him or even from what he saw on TV...
“He was always trying to do different things, strange things, moves that seemed impractical and silly. Sometimes, they were moves he'd seen in a comic-book...or somewhere on TV. And when they didn't work, he simply continued to practice them...simply determining to make himself stronger, faster and more agile until the moves finally became practical.
“I remember…the races they used to have…that is, the races the wrestling team used to have. The goal was simply to be the first to pass the finish line. But you were encouraged to do whatever it took to get the other racers out of your way…tripping, throwing, pushing…if you were pinned, then you were eliminated from the race…and if you took first place, then that meant that you were the team captain for that year.
“Anyway, people hadn’t seen much of Tyrone…he’d disappeared into his own world. People would say they saw him lifting weights, or drilling moves…but he always had his headphones on and he seemed to intent on his work to talk to anyone. Tyrone’s cousin, Roland, he was nearing the finish line…there was a huge crowd gathered…as always…in Sparta, wrestling was always the only sport that mattered. Roland was so fast that none of the wrestlers had even made it to the track, where the final leg of the race was conducted. Then, out of nowhere…Tyrone appeared. There were scratches and bruises all over his body and his eyes blazed with a ferocious determination. In no time, he and Roland were side by side…Roland elbowed him in the face and moved ahead…but Tyrone roared and bounded after him, snatching him by the shirt and casting him several feet back.
“And there was Tyrone’s older brother, a great black giant built out of iron thews, standing before him at the finish line, ready to push him down as he’d always done in the past. His brother had been away, off wrestling in college. Now he’d returned, it seemed, to reestablish his dominance over his younger sibling.
“Though the people watching had grown up in one of America’s most powerful wrestling town, they gasped when Tyrone shot through the air like a leaping tiger, colliding into his brother like a bolt of lightning crashing against the side of a mountain. For a moment, the two stalemated each other, but then his brother was borne back, like a man on the crest of a wave…until finally he was bowled over and the two bodies tumbled together over the finish line. In his brothers eyes glittered a savage joy…he didn’t release Tyrone, but clasped him with all his strength. Tyrone returned the embrace…even as Roland, who had dove past the finish line while Tyrone struggled against his brother…was carried aloft by the spectators as that season’s team captain. “
In the ring, KnightMask’s sparring partners, having been overwhelmed by a whirlwind of submission holds, were taking a break while the masked grappler did hand-stand pushups on the ring turnbuckle.
“Failure is a part of becoming stronger. Easy victories strengthen nothing but a person’s own arrogance. And the stronger the wrestler’s opponents, the stronger he is made by them. And yet, this is only so if both opposing forces try with all their might to defeat one another. It is through the challenge they pose to one another that each one grows. Thrown up against the wall of their physical limitations, they are forced to transcend those limits, to make their souls truly the masters of their bodies. And it is through this process that KnightMask has sought to become ever closer to the ideal he strives to realize.”
“So is that why KnightMask entered the XWF? To go up against the strongest opponents…so they could make him stronger? I mean, what if they kill him?”
“Strength, be it strength of body or of will, is only a part of being a superhero, I suppose. No…KnightMask joined the XWF…because of Natalia Rodrigo. He joined the XWF…because of me.”