The Strings of Fate and Fortune: The Takuma Sato Story: Chapter 1 A Ultimate Online wrestling Character.

Prologue: Sato is a fictional character inside the Ultimate Online Wrestling universe. He is a 1st generation born American from Japanese immigrants and is currently living in Detroit Michigan where our story begins. He is 19 years of age and has trained in Jeet Kune Do since he was 5 years of age. The strings of fate have now dragged him into the deadly Tournament of Fortune.

Sato Monologue: - It’s hard watching your parent’s lives fall apart right in front of your eyes, especially at a young age. You know what’s going on is going to affect your life as well, but as it’s happening slowly day by day, all you can compulsively think about is…how can I help fix this?

The scene opens up outside in front of a middle class looking home on a dimly lit neighborhood street inside the economically decimated city of Detroit Michigan. Many of the houses on the street look long abandoned and boarded up with graffiti spray-painted all over them. However, the house in focus looks pristine and immaculately kept up almost standing out like a sore thumb. The grass is cut perfectly and the shrubbery is groomed to perfection. The property is an anachronism standing from a time long forgotten. A time when the motor city reigned supreme as America’s most industrially prosperous city.

Sato Monologue: - it’s difficult watching your neighborhood and city fall apart bit by bit like mine has. I remember the 80’s fondly, but my father says that’s when things started to go downhill. My father, Akio, had worked at General Motor’s for 30 years until the auto company almost went bankrupt and he was forced to retire and take a buyout for his pension. As result, our family lost its health insurance but thanks to President Obama General Motors was bailed out and we now receive health care from the Affordable Health Care Act. Still, my father felt shamed by how he was treated by the auto company and to make matters worse all the money he had invested in the stock market disappeared in less than 3 weeks when the Dow Jones had the largest recorded losses in its history since the Great Depression.

The scene cuts to the inside of the nice-looking house revealing a beautiful well-kept kitchen with marble countertops. In the kitchen we see an older Japanese man and woman arguing and a younger Japanese male adult standing in the archway of the hallway that leads into the kitchen. He is leaning up against it and watching with a depressed look on his face as his parents have an appalling quarrel.

Akio Sato: There you go running your mouth again! I don’t know what we’re going to do! The loan company said they can’t give us any more time and that we need to pay our debt to them by next month Meiko!

Meiko Sato: I told you opening that damn martial arts school was a horrible idea!

Sato Monologue: - My father had remortgaged our house with Quicken Loans to open up a Jeet Kune Do school. Now the mortgage lender was threatening to repossess our house, leaving us homeless much to my mother’s dismay. My father thought opening a school for defense training could help provide a steady income for our household after he lost his job, but the idea had backfired on him since more of the population in our city became unemployed and found themselves out of work.

My father’s grandfather had traveled to China from Japan as a young man and trained in the art of Jeet Kune Do from a legendary master. He had passed his training down to my father’s father and then he passed it down to my father, who then passed it on down to me. Since the age of 5, I’ve been training daily and also fighting in martial arts competitions all over the country in-between my strict study schedule. My room is littered with trophies of past accomplishments, but I honestly I only did it because it made my old man proud, and it seemed to keep our spirits up when times were hard.

Akio Sato backhands his wife hard across the face which drops her to the floor on her hands and knees. This invokes anger in Takuma who rushes up to his father and attempts an attack. His much more experienced father catches his right arm and hits him in the chest with a palm strike that sends Takuma up against the kitchen wall. The impact rattles the dishes drying on the dish rack and the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling on inserted metal hooks. Sato regains his composure and then shouts at his heavily breathing father.

Sato: Does hitting mother make you feel better about our situation? Is this the answer to our problems? ANSWER ME! WHERE IS THE HONOR IN WHAT YOU DO FATHER?

Akio Sato stares at Sato with an angry look on his face before walking into his home office room and slamming the door shut behind him. Sato slowly gets to his feet and then helps his mother up off the floor. Meiko wipes away some blood trickling down her chin from her freshly swollen lower lip.

Meiko Sato: Your father has no honor…Sometimes… I don’t know why I even married him… or where I even found him for that matter…

Sato Monologue: - It’s really hard hearing something like that from your mother, but over time I found ways to deal with all the domestic violence both verbal and physical from both my parents. Meditation became my escape and with it, a newfound understanding of the world that few ever discover in a lifetime.

Takuma grabs an ice pack from the freezer and places it over the swollen lip of his mother Meiko. He then walks her to her room before entering his own. As he shuts the door behind him and then lights a few candles. He then sits down on the floor on a yoga mat before crossing his legs and placing his hands on his knees in a classic meditation pose. The young Asian American then closes his eyes and begins meditating. A sped-up time sequence occurs and hours pass within seconds. As the day to transforms to night, it slows back down to real-time just as Sato’s eyes open. He slowly gets up off his feet and walks into the hallway that leads to his father’s office.

Sato Monologue: - Call it intuition; call it a sixth sense I’ve honed over 10 years of dedicated meditation, call it whatever you want, but I could feel something was “off” inside our home that night. As I moved closer to my father’s office door the feeling cultivated inside my mind like a weed growing in the soil. When I entered, I was horrified to see him dangling from a noose he’d tied to the chandelier that hung over his office desk.

Takuma dashes towards his father and grabs him by his legs struggling to lift him out of the noose. He eventually dislodges him and he collapses to the floor with his father’s lifeless body next to him. The scene ends with a top-down shot of Takuma staring into his father’s ballooned face and bloodshot cold dead eyes as he sobs slowly to himself.

Sato Monologue: - For some reason our ancestors felt that taking your life was an honorable way to exit this world when you’d been disgraced whether in battle or life. Unfortunately, this archaic way of thinking still exists in Japan, and even in Japanese Americans like my dad. We didn’t let what remaining family we had back in the homeland hear of his death and my mother and I, we was the only ones at the funeral. My mother never shed a single tear until we got home. I think she was so angry at my father’s cowardice act that she couldn’t feel any remorse.

The scene opens with Takuma standing dressed in a black suit holding an umbrella while standing next to Meiko Sato. Rain pours down on them and on the blue casket housing the body of Akio Sato as it’s lowered into the ground. A priest gives his final prayer and then Sato is asked to cast the first granules of dirt into the gravesite. The scene cuts to Sato and his mother finally arriving home. Meiko drops to her knees on the wooden floor and bursts into hysterical tears within minutes of stepping into the house.

Meiko: What are we going to do now Takuma?

Takuma: I don’t know mother… but will figure something out.

Sato Monologue: - I couldn’t stomach to watch her cry and at the time I didn’t have an answer to what was now my problem, my debt, and my responsibility. I walked down the hallway and entered my father’s old office. As I walked around his desk and sat in his chair I poured myself a glass of my father’s Sake he had hidden underneath it. As I took my first sip something caught my eye, a blinking red light on my father’s archaic answering machine he’d still been using.

Sato sits up in the black leather desk chair and sets down the glass of Sake before pressing play on the answering machine.

Voice: Akio! Ivan Stricker! My friend! I’m so sorry it took me this long to get back to you. I hope you have not been too worried about all the pressure the loan company has been putting on you, but I think I’ve managed to work out a deal with “Ultimate Online Wrestling” for your boy. It’s a brand new wrestling promotion and they’re having a tournament to crown their first champion! The promoter is calling it the “The Tournament Fortune” and this could be just the ticket to get you and your family out of this situation you’re in. It’s completely up to you, but they are offering $5’000 just for signing up and participating which should keep the loan company happy for a while and keep them from repossessing your home.

Takuma’s eyes light up when he hears the money involved in this bizarre deal his father had been working on with this stranger. He quickly pulls an IPAD out of his father’s center desk drawer and begins researching wrestling promotion.)

Takuma Sato: A wrestling company? I’m not even a fucking wrestler…

Ivan Stricker: If you kid is as good a fighter as you say and he wins this thing you’re money problems are over. 100’000 dollars to the man who is crowned champion! So you and your son need to be on an airplane and out here to Las Vegas as soon as possible. I’ve arranged for a flight for the two of you out of Detroit Metro Airport. I’ll be picking you up Thursday night and remember that I’ll be taking a 10% mangers cut out of all our earnings. Don’t flake out on me and not show up! I had to pull a lot of strings to book this match!

Sato Monologue: - I sat there for a good 20 minutes trying to think through how I would even begin to apply my martial arts training in a wrestling match with no prior wrestling experience. It wasn’t long however till I was packing a bag and calling a cab to drive me to Detroit Metro Air. I left the house without even telling my mother where I was going or when I’d be back. I knew she would try to talk me out of it and I didn’t want to have to deal with all that drama. Even if I took a severe beating, I’d still be walking out of the Luxor hotel arena with $5’000 in my pocket. Enough money to fend off the loan sharks for a few more months and put food on our table for the next few weeks or so...

The scene cuts to Takuma Sato exiting his cab and getting out in front of the entrance of the DMA domestic terminal. After grabbing his blue duffel bag and paying his driver, he heads through the electronic sliding doors, waits through the endless TSA checkpoints, and then boards his plane heading towards Las Vegas Nevada. The scene fades to black with 747 taking off into the setting sun.

To be continued…