"Where is he?" the whispers went up among the parents who'd brought their children to the post-match press conference at the MGM Grand. "Where's KnightMask...?"

Some came because they wanted, desperately, for their children to accept a role model like such as they perceived KnightMask to be; clean-cut, kind and pious. If they could get them to embrace KnightMask and forget about some of those other, less savory characters, especially that awful Cobra character that was always jumping off things from high places and carrying around that awful snake...well then, maybe then their kids could keep watching wrestling after all. Others were dragged along by their children, who were dying to meet what they saw as a real-life superhero. And of course, there were those parents of mute and deaf children.

It didn't take long for their eager anticipation to become twisted and bent into worried anxiety and of course, finally disappointment, feelings of hatred and betrayal for that man that had stood them and their children up...that had so callously abandoned his fans.

Some reasoned that his injuries might be too great, he might be getting treatment at the emergency ward of a hospital even now. Sure, he got beaten with a crowbar, slammed onto steel...heck, who knows, he might never wrestle again when you look at it that way.

Others, and these were the majority, began to doubt that he was the man they saw on TV. Maybe he wasn't even really mute. Maybe he was just a pro-wrestler who was bad on the microphone and was looking for a cop-out. Maybe his love for the fans came to an end when the cameras stopped rolling.

But in the end, the reason was simple.

The reason was that he still remembered. After all these years, he still remembered.

They'd never spoken, never played together.

He hadn't even known her name. And if he was honest with himself, KnightMask had to admit...he didn't know it even now. And, amongst his fathers hundreds of offspring, how could it be otherwise...? Especially for an undersized bastard such as him, lying even further on the fringes of than the others.

But for all that, she was his sister.

There had been so many women there, that day. More than he'd ever seen in one place. His mother had been there, and though he'd wanted to hide behind her legs, it was she who seemed to hold him out front of her, like a kind of protection, a ward. Leaving him, small and afraid, to be thrust into the world of that impassive, unsmiling giant.

His mouth had remained straight, and he spoke in deep, emotionless and steady tones. And yet, it was in his eyes that you could see a window into the teeming cauldron of malignant hatred festering within.

He was Arlan "The Dragon" Gunder--his father, in the sense that it was him who impregnated KnightMask's mother--and he had loomed above all of them in that room, his every move, his every twitch, heavy with explosive, violent potentiality. The man he was talking with, an oily skinned, greasy-haired man whose fat seemed to ooze, had other men at his side. Men dressed in business suits, carrying guns, big ones, the likes of which he'd seen spray bullets at Batman in the comic-books he read. And yet, they seemed nearly as uncomfortable and afraid as the women were, as KnightMask himself had been, who was then only little Tyrone Gunder, tiny and weak. Each time Arlan moved, they seemed to tense, fearfully, like deer ready to flee before a wolf.

Every so often, Arlan would casually look over and gesture to one of the women, and then the fear on their side of the room would become thick and heavy. The soft, oily man would say something and then they would return to talking. And then the fear would recede and then for a time, so that they on the other side of the room, the side of all those women and KnightMask, could breath again.

And then finally, the fat, oily man had pointed to her. To KnightMask's sister. Arlan had shaken the man's hand...and then, Arlan Gunder had smiled. It was a smile without mirth, without warmth.

And then his sister was taken away, too afraid to fight or scream, yet unable to hold back the tears that streamed down her face.

It had been more than two decades ago. Yet it could have been yesterday.

He stared at the newspaper clippings he'd adorned over the wall of the gym in which he'd taken up residence during his time in Vegas. Newspaper clippings about the young girl, Lacey Witasick, who'd come into Eric Rex's clutches. Detailing how Eric Rex had been using the girl as a bargaining chip against Wallace Witasick...just as his father had used his sisters, his aunts and countless others in his dark dealings.

And he promised to himself. Never again.

NEVER. AGAIN.

He turned back from the newspaper clippings and ghosts of the past. Back to the footage of Eric Rex. For the 110th time that day, he watched him apply his Cuban Necktie triangle choke in slow motion.

He would know all of Rex's set-ups to the choke, the language of his body before he attempted it, the nuances of how he finished it. And then he would determine the most effective way to capitalize on the fact that the application of the Cuban Necktie presents Rex's legs to KnightMask. He'd already done the same for the Apache Job. It was going to be a systematic, scientific process.

He was going to get a hold of Rex's legs and he was going to make him submit. And then he was going to make him talk.

This time, it wasn't about art. It wasn't about sportsmanship. It wasn't about Eric Rex and Jason E. Smith pushing the limits of the Crimson Knights, even as the Crimson Knights pushed theirs.

It was about Lacey Witasick. It was about taking Eric Rex and forcing him to give up the little girl whom he'd stolen from her real parents. Whose childhood he'd put on hold.

Someone had to give her that childhood back. Someone had to rescue her.

Until Warfare, every waking hour of KnightMask's life was going to be devoted to the study of Eric Rex. He was going to determine all his weaknesses...and then he was going to exploit them....the way Rex was, even now, exploiting Lacey Witasick.