8:34 PM…Somewhere in America
The streets of the city are glowing from the combination of overhead street lights and the wet cement from a recent storm. People are bustling through, leaving their places of business, going to a concert, wondering if their baseball team is playing that evening.
They say that Las Vegas is the city that never sleeps, but that is true of almost all major cities around the world. Something is always going on.
From atop his perch, looking down upon the hurried masses sits a man that not many people know, though he will soon be noticed by the teeming crowds of SCW’s wrestling arenas.
Until the day that he walks into a wrestling ring, he will still be one of the faceless. He has spent is more than 20 years on the planet being an unknown entity, an enigma of sorts.
No one knows who he is, yet. But soon enough, they will.
Sitting, silently observing the people that are below, all anyone knows about him is the fact that they don’t know anything. He hides his past. His billed “hometown” was ripped from a mockumentary about a controversial wrestler from the 80s.
Even his name, a symbol that is too easily mistaken with the letter that it looks like, doesn’t tell a story of who this man really is.
He sits, he waits, he thinks.
For him, this is as much of a home as any apartment or hotel room that he’s ever lived out of.
The clouds that had filled the sky have now vacated the heavens, the light reflected off the surface of the moon visible to all, the stars strain to be seen through the light pollution that the human population has caused over the years in building the sprawling metropolis.
The sounds of the street are interrupted by the sound of a cell phone ringing. The man chosen to be known as X pulls the phone from his pocket and takes a look at the screen. He taps the screen and returns the phone to where he had pulled it from. The call isn’t important. Nothing is important when he is sitting, quite literally, on top of the world.
8:36 PM…Many stories below
Dane Kitts is standing in the middle of the lobby of the very building that X was sitting on top of. He looks at his phone in disbelief.
“The nerve of some people, he knows that we have to leave soon.” Dane looks up, realizing that his thoughts had been said out loud, instead of staying in his perfectly shaved head. The rather prominent marking on his face defies the man who bears it.
The story of who Dane Kitts is, or rather how he became to be that man, is more interesting than the man that he waits on.
In fact, it was that past that brought Dane into the company of the man that everyone will soon be calling X, though many will mistake looking at his name and calling him X instead. Dane is one of the few people that even knows X’s real name, where he’s from, or what his past has been other than the last five years.
That’s a brotherhood that not many people can understand.
Five years and a lifetime ago
Dane first met X when they both were attending a seminar on fighting techniques. It was being taught by a guy that wanted to make everyone that was there think that they were on the path to fighting in the world famous Octogon owned by the Fertitta Brothers. At the time, everyone knew X by the somewhat phonetic spelling of his identity.
Much like he does now, he sat in that gymnasium, sitting quietly, and observing what was going on. The mixed martial artist was showing everyone the “proper” way of applying a kimura. At this point, two and a half hours after the seminar started, everyone was thinking that they paid 2.5k just to see this. Some were calling bullshit on the whole seminar; some still had dollar signs in their eyes.
Not the man that would eventually go by a symbol. He just sat there.
“You, mute, come here and let’s see if you can lock this on Me.” the man was confident that there was no way that this “beginner” could do it, but he liked to fuck with those that don’t seem to be that attentive.
The young man got up and walked to the mat that he had basically been dared to go towards. Like all of the other young men there, he already had his gloves on. Silently he stood there and waited. Less than a minute later, the fighter was grasping his arm, thankful that it wasn’t broken.
That put an end to the seminar, and most of the people were angry that they didn’t get their money’s worth because of someone like them teaching the teacher.
Dane wasn’t one of them though. As they all left the gymnasium, Dane chased after the young man he only knew of as Cross.
“Whoa, hold up a second. Where’d you learn that from?” The excitement in Dane’s voice was that of someone that found coattails that he could possibly ride.
X just kept walking towards the car that he had driven to the gymnasium. He didn’t even make eye contact. Dane made the mistake of getting in his way. X looked right at him; a “why the fuck did you get in my way” look came to his eyes.
“Man, what you did in there was fucking awesome. My name is Daniel, but everyone just calls me Dane.”
The man that would come to be known as X simply sidesteps the man, making it to his car and leaving. Little did he know, what the future would hold for him.
A Year Later
A year had passed and Dane had gotten into Mixed Martial Arts. Fighting for a promoter that liked style over substance, Dane felt quite at home. That night, he was fighting a man that he had run into a year earlier at a seminar. One that he knew could fight.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this fight is a light heavyweight bout scheduled for 3 rounds. In the blue corner, fighting out of Des Moines, Iowa, Dane “The Des Moines Demolisher” Kitts.” The announcer came up with the nickname on his own, Dane didn’t like it all too much.
“And in the Red Corner, fighting out of…”
Well, the introductions to the fight weren’t important. What was important was that Dane was supposed to throw the fight, and didn’t. His pride got the best of him. That night, he found himself strapped to a chair by a pair of rather burly looking men, upset that he cost them as much money as he had.
Now, obviously they didn’t kill him. Instead, on his left cheek they simply tattooed the word “FINK”. The beating he took afterwards was even worse than anything that he had taken in the ring. By the time they were done, he wasn’t able to walk on his own, hold a can of soda or even eat solid food.
He was thrown into a back alley, bleeding profusely, left to die. Only, he didn’t. He woke up a day later in a hospital. Sitting in a chair across from him was a man that he tried to recognize. With his one good eye, he squinted to attempt to focus on the person’s face.
The fact that his jaw was wired shut didn’t stop him from trying to talk to him. “I know you.” Dane said through his clenched teeth as he pointed.
The man stood up and just nodded in agreement.
“Last year, the kimura?” Again, the man nodded.
“You don’t say much, do you?” The man that was known to Dane at the time as Cross just shook his head as if to say no. He exited the room.
Unfortunately for Dane, he was meant to die in that alley, and when the two thugs found out that he in fact did not get perished, they came and decided to finish the job. Unfortunately for them, the man that would eventually take on a symbol as an identity was still there.
As they attempted to subdue their injured prey, they found themselves on the receiving end of a beating worse that what they had done the previous evening to Dane. As he watched the carnage from his bed, Dane realized that the man was really a saving grace for him, that there was something about him that he thought that he could relate to. He didn’t know what that was, but as he saw the man putting his foot to the faces and ribs of two men that easily outweighed him by 100 pounds, he knew that there was something special about this guy.
8:40 PM…The lobby
A young girl looks at Dane’s face, amazed by the rather large tattoo on his left cheek. Dane notices this, and looks through his glasses at her. He diverts his attention back to his phone and thinks about redialing the last number that he called.
Finally, he decides that it would be the appropriate thing to do, only for an elevator to open up on the other side of the lobby. From inside it emerges X, seemingly relaxed from his sojourn to the top of the world.
“Man, we have to go. There are still things we have to do before you leave for London.”
The man that had been a friend to Dane for the last 4 years just walks up to him and puts a gloved hand on his shoulder.
“Relax, Dane. Everything is good.”
