1 Dave Batista

Dave was a sizeable man. Strong enough to lift a two ton truck without much effort, tall enough to see the top of a refrigerator, and tough enough to endure days of torture in Afghanistan.

Dave was called "Bat" by all the people that knew him since his pre-adult years. He punched and kicked kids who got into fights with him into the air and spectators would scream "homerun"!

Back from his service in the military he pursued a career as an umpire and eventually landed a job in the major leagues. Unfortunately, he had made a horrible error in judgement, he had made the call that the runner headed to second base was out. Reason being a crushing expectation that the ball would be caught well before the runner would reach second base, however the ball was indeed caught, but not before the runner actually touched second base. It would have been a complete disrespect of the job he held if it would have been that simple. An Umpire was meant to be an unbiased party; not holding allegiance or preference to either team. In this case however he could not see the ball land as the shortstop blocked his view. The crowd on the opposite side and coach of the fielded team could clearly see what had happened however. The crowd boiled with rage believing that this was all the proof they needed to expose a corrupt Umpire. The bellowing of the affected team's Coach only caused the crowd's growing rage to explode. The crowd stampeded down towards the devastated, and perplexed Umpire.

Nothing could have prepared him for this moment. Try as he might he could not resist as thousands of angry baseball fans crushed him under their combined weight. He began to hear the next life call for him. Soon realizing he had no choice but death he wished nothing more than to have something to swing in his next life.

-

He awoke; he was surrounded by a blazing fire. Farther away he could see glimpses of a giant building collapsing extremely slowly around him. He could hear the crackling of the wooden frame of the building all around him. Beyond he could hear projectiles destabilizing the building even further. Realizing he could not stick around and wait to get consumed by the raging flames, or crushed under the roof of the building he began searching for a way out. Shortly after he found a beautifully simple sword. To any other man the sword would be a sword meant to be held in two hands, but to Dave it looked like a one-handed one. The sword seemed familiar to him even though he had no obvious memories of the blade. He dusted off the flames on his clothes then grabbed the majestically simple sword and let loose a sword swing. No, to him this was his bat, the one he so eagerly wished for before his death. The swing, so powerful, it split both the flames and rubble ahead of him. He immediately jumped into the opening he made out of the building's walls.

" The Bat is back baby!" He yelled.

There was one more thing he had to try. he grabbed a piece of rubble the size of a bowling ball lunged it into the air and swung his majestic sword-bat to connect with the rubble on its way down. The rubble split cleanly into two, and flew into the same amount of directions in front of him. Each connecting with two beautifully sculpted longbows; splitting them into two before crushing the wonderfully chiseled English faces controlling them.

"Double!"

He neither cared for why he was here nor where here was. He relaxed his form from his most recent swing, took his swing form again, and continued to swing his new bat with a wide grin on his face.