Unknown Titanium

Written on 06/25/2020

Unknown Titanium

After the pandemic, beauty standards are not constructed by physical attractiveness. Not by the shape of their eyes, nose, and lips. Not by the type of their bodies, whether it is apple-shaped, hourglass, or pear. The beauty pageants and contests don't judge them by their physical attributes. Instead, they rank the contestants through attentively observing them in battle. 

 With a perpetual amount of guidance- I have mastered the fighting style of Mixed Martial Arts. The next competition is held at noon tomorrow, the Royal family is funding this competition for the first time. I think best that it would be an interesting event seeing as the entire Royal family will be present. My mother suggests that I step down from competing.

 "I don’t like violence!" she exclaimed.

Mother continued to give reasons to try and change my mind in the next round of the competition. It could be that I fractured my left leg in the previous year and it took two months for it to heal. Another reason might be when I had lost in one battle and the left side of my jaw got broken. That hurts more than getting a wisdom tooth extracted, I can tell you that much. But the real reason why she is so upset is that someone important passed on in one of their fights. I took on her stage name as her apparition. Whenever I step inside of the stages, the audience wheeze as if they had seen a ghost. Mother doesn’t like it and she disagrees with what I do with every ounce of her being. I understand that she is frustrated emotionally and mentally, but I promised her that I would stop after I win just one fight. But after two years, I lost to every single one. 

As I squeeze myself through the small hallway where the other girls change into their combat costumes. The spectator crowded the entire coliseum holding their support banner for their particular participant. The affluent Royal family gets to sit with the adjudicators in the front. I’ve never seen the Prince in real life. Personally speaking, his features meet history’s basic beauty standards.

"Innocent Soul, Pass!" 

The adjudicator shouts through the microphone as I slide my eyes down to look at the winning participant. The crowd with her banner cheered and shouted with joy. The medical unit sprinted out with a gurney and gently and slowly lifted “Silent Shadow” onto the stretcher. I know her name not because it’s on the projector screen, but because I had lost to her a while back. I might as well step out now and wait to be called. As I make my way to take a seat from the opposite side of the adjudicators, I glance at the Prince in real-time. Our eyes met briefly but I doubt that he could see mine because of the mask that I include as part of my combat costume.

The weapons are perfectly laid out on the sidelines as the adjudicator repeats what he says in every match. 

“Choose your weapons wisely and make sure you don’t kill one another!” 

I watched each passing fight breeze through patiently hoping that I would memorize a few tricks as much as I could before it’s my turn.

“Up next, Beautiful Sacrifice Verses Unknown Titanium.”

Wow, the sound of her stage name almost made me laugh. If I were to have come up with my own name, that probably wouldn’t have been it though. The hourglass sand ticks and I eye on the weapons not sure which one to choose. The last sand drops and she quickly blitzes over to grab the sword. I chose the nearest weapon to me. Throwing knives. I've chosen quite a disadvantage. I observed her fighting style. She swings the sword and it cuts my right shoulder pad a little. I wrapped the throwing knives belt around my waist and pulled out the first knife slicing it across her rib cages. She dodges but it still cuts her a little. She swings the sword to toss the knife back to me. I caught it with my right hand and quickly ran behind a tent trying to read her next move. She somersaults in the air and swings the sword cutting the tent in pieces to find me. I pull out the curved knife to block her sword from almost breaking my wrist with her brute strength. 

“Come on, Titanium are you going to lose to me too?”

I instantly break free from her as her sword shove right in front of my face. I jumped back and spun myself and stood behind her as my knife met the side of her neck.

“Admit defeat,” I said.

The gas colored gun shoots as the adjudicator send a team of people in uniform to pull the two of us back. The cheering in the background shifted as everyone started to chant something indistinct but I could hear them.

 “Lose the weapons.” 

“Rematch!!”

The crowd doesn’t seem to support my victory. It would appear that Beautiful Sacrifice has a support system wearing shirts with her silhouette in the front. The adjudicators try to calm the audience down letting them know that the match isn’t over and that the two of us will be taking a break before we come back out to finish our fight. I felt prejudicial treatment from that instance. 

Clean towels were handed to us. Food and drinks were aligned down the hall and I walked right past it and sat down on a chair and rested for half an hour.  

The sound of the colored gas fires and instantly the two of us grab the nearest water bottle and drink it down to the last gulp. The timer on the hourglass sand is ticking as each grain of sand falls to the bottom of the glass. 

“Welcome back, this is the promised rematch that the crowd has been waiting for. Everybody grab your snacks and drinks as we wait for the two contestants to arrive back on the scene. Take your best seats and scream from the top of your lungs who’s going to win tonight, would it be the petite Beautiful Sacrifice or is it going to end with the ghost of Unknown Titanium?”

The loud cheering and chanting in the background almost made it impossible for me to bring myself back out there. Especially with the Royal family sponsoring this for who knows what reason. The red flag in front of my face indicates that this is a fighting match without weapons involved as the audience have suggested. The woman to my right wraps my hand with bandages and on my left, the man on my opponent’s side is fixing a glove on to her hands. The flag cleared out as the two of us met in the center. She went ahead and stood behind the white line on the ground marked as I stood behind the yellow line and waited for the adjudicator to tell us when we could start.

“You two may begin when you see gas appear underneath you.”

That is strange. I’ve never had a gas match before. Is this new?

Suddenly, I felt hands pushing me from behind. I gasp and look around me, has it started already? The pink gas fogs up my vision as I hear the sound of her spirit kya hai vowel. I grab onto her left wrist and toss her across the grass and she slides down almost touching the orange line but instead, she curls up her legs and jumps over and tackles me down to the ground with her left hand on my throat and her right fist constantly punching my face over and over again without mercy. Her sweat and saliva drip from her every time that she moves or says an insult to me. I did however manage to break free from her hold, sliding underneath her and sending her flying with the thrust of my flutter kick. She charges immediately at me and I dodge each of her swings. I backflipped and dodge roll and monitor her from behind the gas and I ended the match grabbing the cloth belt on her combat costume design and luring her close to me enough for me to pressure her spirit gate to put her to rest. The gas cleared up and it revealed to the audience that I am unfortunately the winner.

The Prince suddenly approached me and tried to get my attention.

“Congratulations on winning, I’m here to give you your prize.” He says,

“What is it?” I said.

The Prince took my left hand and placed a golden ring on it.

“Marriage, of course!”

It turns out, the Royal family sponsored the Battle competition to find a suitable wife for their young Prince. Well, it wasn’t all bad. I finally won and my Mother is relieved that the fighting is finally officially over.

END.