So there I stood, with a giant stuffed pink teddy bear in my hands and a pool of blood around my feet where my heart had moments ago fallen dead. The blood of course was purely figurative. The bear on the other hand was quite real. You’ll always find people in the oddest of states if you meet them the moment their heart has broken for the first time. Even more interesting in some cases is how they got to that point and where they go after.

Almost two years prior to standing under dark clouds holding a giant stuffed bear in a pool of imaginary blood I found myself on the verge of a turning point. I belonged, as most preteens do, to a close knit group of friends. I was the mostly shy unofficial leader of the clan (the mouth), Ben was the brainiac borderline crazy one (the brain), Daniel was the bad ass cool guy (the arm), and Michael was the spacey dreamer (the heart). We were a close group going into the seventh grade but our days were numbered. Michael had already moved to another school and in a few years Ben would be moving to Texas. Daniel would hang around for years to come but we would grow further apart.

High school was right around the corner and little did I know one of my best and longest lasting friends was about to be made. If I’m recalling correctly it was an English class. Although I was beginning to come out of my shell I was still mostly the shy kid in class. It must have seemed then a good idea to sit a talkative well meant troublemaker next to me in order to shut him up. After all his choices would have been talk to me or talk to the wall which would’ve been equally as successful as talking to me.

What the teacher didn’t realize about Jeremy Berry was that if I hadn’t broken first he without doubt would have gotten the wall to actually speak. Sadly he won’t be remembered as the man who convinced an inanimate object to talk. He should rather be credited in part and among other things as the man who began to peel away my shell piece by piece.

Now before Jerry and I made friends my former group and I had been infatuated with a book series that had been released a few years prior called Animorphs in which five kids are given the power to “morph” into any animal they can touch by an alien. The alien gives them said power in order to fight off an impending invasion from another alien race. My friends and I were inspired and began writing our own series called Dinomorphs. In our version the main characters accidentally fell into a mass container of dinosaur DNA samples and as a result contracted the amazing power to morph into dinosaurs. The scientists that owned the facility then charged the kids with the task of stopping the spread of a biologically engineered super lizard called the dirtling.

That idea didn’t last long but the monster lizard known as the dirtling became a pet creation of mine. I soon after convinced Michael, Ben, and Daniel to create their own creatures and a new idea blossomed. The Creators was the name of the tale. It was a super hero story that played on the power of the human mind. That particular story has continued to grow to this very day but it was never more exciting and important than in those days. In this story the main protagonist (me) and his friends (my friends) mysteriously were one day able to transform into a creature they had each created. Antagonists came in the form of evil class mates that discovered and repeated their secret as well as from their own drunkenness with power as they grew through their teenage years. During these early stories it was never meant for them to know or find out how they got the power. Much later it was meant for the character based on me to discover he had a unique power to unlock the potential of the human mind and had thus unlocked this power himself within all of them by glorious mistake.

Anyway I was in the midst of planning out this epic when I met Jerry and upon discovering it he was more than more than willing to join in the creative process. If his need to talk lit the fire of our friendship, my creative epic and our equal interest in clandestine power, unquestioned trust and authority, and preordained legendary significance ignited it. It was a shared obsession that would step out of the realm of fantasy heroism and into reality in the form of a faction known as Killer Instinct.

But hang on, I’ve got to explain why I was standing there heart broken with a giant stuffed animal in my hands first. Then we’ll get to Killer Instinct a few years after that.

So there we were, Jerry and I, new found friends with equal interests. Unfortunately (later thought very fortunately) we were about to find a mutual interest we couldn’t share. Her name was Natasha. She was a red headed green eyed beauty with a tendency to be quite sharp tongued. Jerry and I sat with her at lunch a number of times and argued with her quite fervently as I recall. So it was rather surprising when I began to realize that I was becoming infatuated with her.

I still remember the day that Jerry looked at me and said, “John, I think I like Natasha.”

I laughed and responded, “I think I do to.”

And there it was. We were newfound friends both having openly declared our like for this young woman. What were we to do? For once in the history of two men lusting after one woman we were able to act with some civility. Natasha had already begun to enter our circle of friendship and the decision between the two of us was to let her get closer and see who she warmed up to. Although, in more typical fashion, I’m sure we each thought we would be the winner.

Over the next year Jeremy, Natasha, and I became closer and closer and as this happened she was showing an increasing interest in me. But don’t fret for Jerry. He would have another woman in the immediate future who would take his mind away from it and an even more wonderful woman to later call his wife.

I had an uphill battle to fight with Natasha. She was a military child with a father opposed to her dating. I was a, lets face it, imaginative geek whose greatest pleasure in life at the time was story writing. Not that there’s anything wrong with story writing as I’m doing it currently. The basic idea here is I didn’t stand a chance. But believe me when I say I tried.

Not long after Natasha became our friend we met a young lady named Melyssa. Melyssa began dating Jerry and became a strong proponent of Natasha and I becoming an couple. She would throw party after party during which Natasha and I came closer and closer to each other. It was also at one such party during a game of truth or dare that in one fell swoop I both got my first kiss and had her cuddle up to me. The kiss happened as you would expect with an outright dare. The cuddling part happen after some deliberation on how to conduct a dare. It came down to telling Natasha she had to sit on somebodies lap for the remainder of the game. She could choose to sit on the lap of anyone at the party. Looking back I guess with Jerry taken and Melyssa’s dad out of the question I was really the only choice.

After the success of that party and the fated game of truth or dare I decided to create a way more complex and interesting variation of truth or dare. I tested out this game during another get together where Melyssa, Natasha, Jerry, and I were the only four in attendance. The game I had created separated kissing dares into their own category. Natasha was posed with a similar situation. She had the choice of kissing anyone she wanted. I puffed up with pride knowing it was going to be me. She the ran over to Jerry, cutely hopped onto his lap, and planted a kiss on his cheek. Jerry was wide eyed with shock looking back at my quite bemused face. Melyssa quickly defused the situation by suggesting we go back to her room to do something else. Jerry apologized later but it was no fault of his and I knew it. Still it was a hurtful moment.

To make this less of a failed love story and continue a little more quickly to the point let’s skip back to that day. It was Valentine’s day 2001. The teddy bear had been for Natasha. My failure in the past was little more than a stumbling block for me up until that day. We were in the ninth grade by now. Jerry and Melyssa had long since broken up and a multitude of new friends had come along but there was still one thing left for me to accomplish. I carried that damn bear around all day. Every class I had with me a giant pink teddy bear. Geez… the things we do for assumed love.

At the end of the day I sought out my lady and presented her with the gift I had lugged around all day baring the judgmental stares of my teenage classmates only to find she couldn’t accept it. Apparently this was the step over the line for her. We both knew the feelings that I had for her. What I didn’t know was that she had already gotten the news that the were moving to Texas at the end of the year. She proceeded then to tell me that she and I never had a chance. So there I stood, with a giant stuffed pink teddy bear in my hands and a pool of blood around my feet where my heart had moments ago fallen dead. It didn’t help that I was later told by a few other friends that she was seen hanging around with an ex-boyfriend. That was also the day that my mouth… drunken with hurt… stabbed at the heart of my still then friend Ben. He was only trying to comfort me about my loss when I made a comment about how he couldn’t understand because his girlfriend wasn’t near what Natasha was. Of course the comment wasn’t that exactly but it was quite hurtful and I do regret saying it.

Eventually in the process of grieving you come to the anger stage. Luckily when I got that far I had Jerry to lean on. He was kind enough to bring over his game WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64. Thus I was reintroduced to an entity I had once briefly known years ago.

For a brief time as a child I knew of and had a slight interest in the (then) World Wrestling Federation. I was at the time what the wrestling literate know as a “mark.” So being I was enamored with performers the like of the Million Dollar Man, Hulk Hogan, the Undertaker, and at the time my favorite Jake “the Snake” Roberts. My mom soon put out that fire. WWF was about to be in the attitude era and it was a period not meant for children. Mom smartened me by educating me on how pro-wrestling was in fact… I shutter to say it… fake.

Anyway, much to my mom’s annoyance, my broken heart and Jerry’s willingness to help me body slam my way through it relit that flame. At first I justified playing the games through the create a wrestler option. My created wrestler was there to dole out punishment to what I considered to be a bunch of dumb wrestlers. I later would’ve kicked myself for including the like of the Undertaker, the Rock, Steve Austin, and Shawn Michaels under the umbrella of “dumb wrestlers.” The more I played the more interested I became in the actual thing. In short the game lead to me watching RAW and RAW eventually lead me to the backyard.

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