THE EVENTS DETAILED OCCUR BETWEEN THE 4/17 AND 4/24 EDITIONS OF WARFARE:

Sitting up in his hospital bed, KnightMask shook his head as he watched Big Bad Leroy's press conference unfold. Over the past week, he had endured much.

He'd battled vampires. He'd lost his ability to walk and nearly lost his soul as well. He'd gained those back, but hadn't been as lucky when it came to the power of speech. A vampire bite, it seemed, had rendered him permanently mute. Then there was the small matter of facing Sebastian Duke and Ann Thraxx in a tag-team match. Duke, aside from being arguably the best wrestler in the world and a near-7 footer, was also sadistic, cruel and--having just experienced the murder of his father--fighting mad. Ann Thraxx was just as sadistic as Duke and far crazier. And after the match, of course, he'd been nearly ground to dust by a veritable army of thugs and ninjas (thugs and ninjas that were employed, not by Bryce, but by Big Bad Leroy).

However, watching Leroy smugly, arrogantly feed lie after lie to reporters who eagerly ate up each one, his endurance had, at last, found its limit. He could take no more. With a click of the channel changer, he switched the television off.

"Hey, why'd you turn it off? That's my boss talkin'!"

KnightMask turned incredulously to the man in the hospital bed next to him.

The man’s brown, slanted eyes were enveloped in bluish bruises. Bandages wrapped about his rib cage and beneath his curly black hair.

That, above all else, was what really stunk about the whole thing.

Big Bad Leroy sucked up the press adulation and basked in the public glow and claimed credit for selflessly coming to KnightMask's aid. He boasted about his wins in the XWF.

Meanwhile, the only reward the man who had actually come to the masked wrestler's defense got...was a trip to the next hospital bed over from KnightMask. The same man who, in all reality, deserved the credit for nearly all of Leroy's victories.

The man in the next bed over. The nurse who had brought him the bowl of ice cream he was currently digging away at had not asked the man for an autograph. No reporter, no XWF star, would recognize his face. They wouldn't know his name.

But maybe, if they saw him wrestle, a glimmer of recognition might dawn. Because he was no stranger to the XWF ring, that man in the hospital bed. That forgotten man.

He didn't fight in anonymity.

No. It was worse than that, KnightMask thought.

He fought under the name of another. Under the name of that grinning gargoyle that, even now, was probably still fielding questions to the press.

The man in the bed next to him, you see, was the man underneath the armor of Big Bad Leroy. His name was Temura Anoa’i…and after tagging with KnightMask against the forces of Sebastian Duke and Ann Thraxx, he’d also been KnightMask’s roommate, of sorts, in the hospital.

“Listen, I know you’ve had your problems with the boss…but hear me out.”

KnightMask nodded.

“Before I met Leroy, I was workin’ shows in middle school gyms, strugglin’ to make chump change. Now look where I am! I’m in the frigging XWF, man! I’ve traded holds with Owen Crooks…gone toe-to-toe with Sebastian Duke…heck, I’ve even gotten on top of Ann Thraxx…even if it was only for three seconds! Before, I couldn’t even afford a poster of her. How many guys have died, gone crazy or ended up broken tryin’ to make it into the XWF? Leroy got me here. Its only right that everytime the ref raises my hand…its his name that gets announced. It wouldn’t be right any other way. He changed my life forever. Everything I am…I owe to him.”

KnightMask gestured to their surroundings. Temura looked at him blankly. KnightMask grabbed a napkin and scribbled on it, “Including your current stay in this hospital?”

Temura shook his head.

“That was my fault…I had no place gettin’ involved. It was just hard for me watchin’ you…I mean, we just got done taggin’ together…I couldn’t help it…seein’ you gettin’ stomped, I had to jump in…even if it was my people…Leroy’s people…doin’ the stompin’. ”

Leroy’s manipulation and exploitation of Temura disgusted KnightMask, but nonetheless, the masked wrestler couldn’t help but be moved by Temura’s unwavering loyalty. He was almost like a modern day samurai…or knight. KnightMask just hoped he didn’t end up dying for his “lord”…or getting executed by him when he outlived his usefulness.

“I know you don’t like how we operate…what with Leroy’s Legion jumpin’ into matches and helpin’ out…but the boss just cares about me too much. He’ll do anything t’help my chances. He don’t want me to end up like…well…”

Temura stopped short before he said it. KnightMask shrugged his shoulders. Cautiously, Temura continued.

“Hey…did that happen…in the ring…? You know, with…your voice…?”

KnightMask shook his head. Stripping off his mask, he craned his head to the side and pointed to the twin puncture marks on his neck. After having been cauterized by the sun’s rays, they looked like the burn marks of some high powered, precision laser. Temura’s almond eyes widened atop his high cheekbones. He leaned forward. His voice fell to a low whisper.

“What…”

Meanwhile, in Leroy’s lair, Vixen crossed herself for the first time in years.
Vixen: Mother of…he has the mark…! I would know it anywhere…the mark of the oupyr…!

The press conference he’d held, which so disgusted KnightMask, had put the gigantic mass of muscle to an even greater test. To speak to others while tempering his disdain for them proved to be too great a challenge. He’d long ago cut the press conference short…and retired to his lair, to monitor KnightMask’s interactions with his erstwhile body-double, that contemptible, naïve dolt, Temura.
He’d found their interactions even more wrenching, full as they were of respect and kindness… and was about to switch off the feed from the Organa-tech audio-visual lenses he’d secretly implanted in the ever-trusting Temura’s eyes. KnightMask’s show and tell about his injured neck did nothing to change his mind, until he saw the reaction of his bodyguard, Vixen, who had been watching the feed alongside her boss from the perch of his massive shoulder.

Big Bad Leroy: Mark of the oupyr…?

Leroy wasn’t sure what his bodyguard was talking about, but he knew, through some dark instinct, that he was interested. Oupyr…the term was vaguely familiar…

Vixen: When I was a young girl in my native Styria…the House of Karnstein ruled over my village with an iron fist…we’d thought a Divine had intervened when a strange plague put that cruel family into the crowd one by one. In truth…it was the hand of Hades itself…and the evil they wreaked amongst my people in life…paled to the horror they worked on us in…in…Ah, it is too horrible to recall! For all their tortures, for all their executions…at least, before…in death, the poor found some escape from the Karnstein’s tyrannical hand…and at least, in those moments before death, they might be visited with a gasp of hope…instead of the grim certainty…that a savage murder by their cold, dead hands…would bring not freedom, be it the freedom of Heaven or of the void…but an eternity of bondage…of…ah, Thank the Lord they were exterminated…!

Vixen broke away from Leroy, stifling a sob with her hand. Leroy grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back. The tremble in her voice, the fear in her face…the tears trickling down her cheeks...Leroy searched to define the strange, alien emotion it was stirring in him. Envy, he realized. He, Big Bad Leroy, was feeling envy!

Whatever it was that could generate such a response in a woman with such steely courage as Vixen…Leroy needed to have it. He wasn’t even sure what “it” was…but anything that could instill such fear…was something he needed to have. Needed to become.

Big Bad Leroy: I knew there was a reason I was watching this crap. If this all means what I think it does…then I just might have a use for KnightMask after all…first though, you’re going to tell me everything about these…”oupyr.” And what they have to do with our favorite masked idiot over there…