KnightMask had awoken to see, through his cracked visor, the hazy vision of Mark Flynn’s hands being raised in victory. His body was limp and reluctant to respond to requests for motion of any sort, having been exerted to its limits during the pitched combat that had pitted him against the US champion Flynn, the mixed martial arts and punk-rock singer Chris MacBeth and his friend, the aerialist World 1-International. Of course, a man like KnightMask was an old hand when it came to bringing rebelling muscles to heel.

Nearly every day of his adult life, he had forced his body to do things it didn’t want to. And so he got to his knees, then one knee and then stood upon his rubbery legs. Rubber legs are a poor foundation, even for professional wrestlers gifted with uncanny balance. And so he fell, his knees caving inward, his shoulders crashing down unceremoniously onto the concrete.

Was it was then that he twisted his knee? Or did it happen when Mark Flynn had thrown his unconscious body over the ropes and to the floor? Whatever the case, he’d limped his way to the backstage and had to support himself against the wall when Liz Weinberg had hunted him down and thrust her microphone into his mask for a post-match interrogation.

“So, are you man enough to stand up for yourself and tell the world that you were robbed?” she had demanded to know from him, her dark eyes fuming, her lips curled back from her white teeth in an angry sneer. “No man can agree enter into an Xtreme rules battle royal and walk away claiming a robbery,” KnightMask had responded, ”In a match such as that, there are no rules except for those that govern the conscious, the ones that every man and woman carries with them always. If I have any regrets, it’s that I violated those rules tonight, by picking up that sledgehammer. To my fans, my training partners…and all who have believed in and supported me, I offer my apologies. I was swept up in the battle...although that is no excuse.”

“So, in other words, you’re such a spineless kiss-up that not only are you going to take that highway robbery lying down like the coward you are…but you’re also going to say sorry for playing too rough with the guys that KICKED YOUR SORRY MASKED BUTT ALL OVER THE ARENA?” Weinberg had seethed at KnightMask. The rest of the interview was a blur, Weinberg attempting to provoke him and of course, succeeding, but not so much that his anger showed. The mask helped with that. All the while his knee had wobbled and threatened to cave. When the interview finished, he was watching Liz stalk off disgustedly in search of a new victim from a squatting position on the floor.

The knee had continued to nag him on the car trip back to Michigan, where he found himself wincing from the impact of Ratboy’s sudden and erratic stops and swerves (at least he hadn’t let Bob, the dead rat he was convinced had raised him up from childhood, take the wheel). It was bad enough so that he actually decided that upon returning, he’d take a break both from live rolling and from working out his legs in general for at least a few days. He felt as if he did heal fairly quickly on the rare occasions that he actually afforded himself the time.

Taking a break.
Letting himself heal.
Sitting back, playing some Fire Pro Wrestling or Smackdown! 4, maybe re-read his collection of the Holyland manga…or even finally find out where those old Conan the Barbarian issues, the ones from Roy Thomas’s second run on the comic, were hiding his mess of a closet. Heck, Natalia was in town, wasn’t she? Sure, she wasn’t there under good circumstances, but did that mean he couldn’t take her out to a movie or something? Because he definitely was going to be taking.

It.

Easy.

She was there waiting for him at Slam Master’s. Some female wrestler who called herself The Red Huntress.

He’d looked her up and down, from the wavy, fiery red hair down her hard, sinewy figure in a black outfit that left her torso from below her chest to just below the navel uncovered, to the lycra tights that hugged her thighs, down to the boots. She flexed her abdominals, smiling at him they formed a hard, muscular shield. She gave him a nod, then a wink and then issued him a challenge.

Behind her, cameras rolled.

Beneath him, his knee throbbed.