"Alright, I'll catch you later."

The screen cuts in on the XWA Heavyweight Champion as he ends his phone call, crossing the threshold into his locker room. He is dripping with sweat, evidence of the grueling training regimen that keeps him in prime condition. The soles of his boots click across tile floor as he crosses the room, dropping his duffel bag onto a bench before tossing his phone on top of it. He takes the towel drapes over his shoulder and pulls it over his face, wiping away the sweat, letting out a long sigh as he begins to wind down from the adrenaline. He steps up to his mirror as he removes the towel, it dropping to the floor as he stops still in his tracks suddenly. The sight of a face in the mirror that one doesn't recognize would be alarming enough for anyone, but perhaps the most driving force of the primal fear pounding against his heart like a tribal drum is that he, in fact, does recognize it. Two gaping black mauls upon the manila and yellow gradient that bone takes with time stare out from the other side, gazing through Danny and into his soul, the sharp barbs of days best forgotten pulling at it and threatening to tow it into the voids. The room behind him seems almost the same as that behind Danny, save the flickering of the minimal lighting and the collage of photographs at the back wall. The Prized Gem can't see them well enough to make out the images, but he doesn't need to. Scenes of travesty and tragedy; gore; flayed bodies; deconstructions of the human condition plastered all over with such multitude that they overlap one another. The champion quickly looks behind him, but is unable to see what the mirror professes to him.

Danny rubs his eyes, praying that this Mirage is nothing more than its namesake, but the sight still stands before him when he looks up again. He raises a hand toward the glass, it trembling with every centimeter it grows closer, but the hand of the devil incarnate remains still as it mimics him. There was no fear, no waver and no mercy within Mirage - a beast so sinister that it drove him to kill his own father. His fingertips brush the glass, finding it cold as ice. It rattles beneath them as a deep voice rumbles out from the other side.

"You disappoint me, Danny..."

Their heads turn to the side slowly, Diamond's curiosity mirrored back to him ominously, a shiver rising from the base of his spine and making a beeline for his skull. He looks back to the XWA World Heavyweight Championship on the bench beside his other belongings, then back toward the mirror, seeing the outline on the other side among the darkness.

"Yes, Danny. You knew... You knew my hunger. Knew from the moment you held it that you were in danger. That the slightest taste of gold would beckon to me.."

"You're not real.."

Danny leans in closely toward the glass, the reflection doing the same. Suddenly the hand on the other side pounds upon the barrier, palm flat across it as Diamond falls back and down onto his rear from the shock.

"PAY ATTENTION"

Mirage steps away, pacing back over to the bench on the other side, leaving Danny utterly bewildered, his eyelids peeled wide open, although not in the all too literal sense that he'd find in a scene against Mirage's back wall.

"Sure, Danny.. you got the gold.. you've done quite well for yourself since we last saw one another. But all of my hard work was lost upon you. Everything that I fought to make you.. to teach you.. cast aside for all of... this!"

The voice seethes with anger and hatred as Mirage brushes his fingers across a poster of Danny, poised in the middle of the ring with his arm held high into the air, the XWA Heavyweight Championship clutched in his grasp before a crowd of cheering fans, bursts of lights dotting the background as they take pictures of the moment.

"I could have given you so much more, Danny.. ruthlessness, fearlessness, unending rage, power beyond all measure.. I could have given you divinity.. given you the status of a true god who reigns supreme and unstoppable... Remember that.."

Mirage reaches into his own duffel bag, removing something that is concealed by the shadows before picking up his title and draping it over his shoulder.

"Remember that well, because not all men are so naive.. He comes for you, Danny.. He comes not to have our gold, but to vanquish it.. to banish it. He is everything you could have been, my pet, and you can't stop him anymore than you could stop me..."

Danny's nightmare begins a slow and steady pace back toward the barrier, the haunting blackness in his features almost seeming to grow with every step.

"Because you still fail to see the truth. I am not your tormentor.. I am your savior. I do not do what I've done to punish you... but to teach you. I did not make you a monster... I made you great, strong, able to do what needed to be done without the hesitation of your petty morality. The mask did not hide you, Diamond.. it showed you for who you truly are. You needed me... and you still do.. because he is coming, Danny.."

A flash of fluorescence alerts the Rubix Cube to the grainy plates on the leather strap across Mirage's shoulder and his eyes grow wider.

"And when he does..."

The black outline of a long thick rod hanging out of the nightmare's hand rises.

"there will be.."

It lashes out and the 'mirror' breaks, glass fragments showering the floor as the XWA Heavyweight champion raises his arm over his face to protect himself from them. The figure steps out over the jagged remains, planting a steel-toed swat style black boot down, shards crunching under his weight.

"nowhere left to hide."

Danny pulls himself up to his feet as the wooden club drops, letting off a heavy thunk as it hits the concrete. The figure reaches up, taking the bottom lip of the mask and peeling it up over his head to reveal that he is not coming, but, rather, is already there.

"Don't be too critical, Danny boy... I did my best, but it's awfully hard to convince a man that spends so much time trying to convince himself.."

The Barbarian Lord takes a step forward as Danny looks past him into the neighboring locker room, the lights still flickering across the gruesome images beyond the shattered window.

"It wasn't surprising to hear you dismiss my past.. Fear strikes a man staring down the inevitable, makes him doubt himself and everything he's ever done.. but man can rarely face such sobering truth, so he projects it onto his enemy. It was not all you had done that was in question before the greatest wrestler in the history of this business... no, it had to be my accomplishments that meant nothing. Only then could you stand and resist that primal urge to save yourself.. I've seen it time and time again..."

Vladimir resituates the Lionheart title on his shoulder before reaching into his black denim trench coat.

"But then you called me a monster, Mr. Diamond... and I saw that same look in your eyes. That desperate need to believe that it was me and not yourself that you were referring to.. And so I reach out to my associate, the Reaper, and had him do a little recon.. Man, that little fucker does some good work.."

The GodKing pulls out a manila envelope and opens it, looking over the contents as he shakes his head.

"You put a little mask on you and you go out and burn a fucking dog, paralyzed a woman, killed your fucking father.. but I'm a monster? Tsk, tsk, Danny boy.."

Danny Diamond suddenly lunges for the folder, thinking in his emotionally fragile state that he could simply destroy it and put everything back to where it was and where it belonged. The Barbarian Lord is more than capable of stopping him, leaning out of the way and lifting his knee into it, striking the World Champion in the solar plexus and sending him sprawling to the floor, gasping for air.

"You see, Danny... I am not a monster. Monsters hide... behind masks, in shadows, in the recesses waiting to strike at opportunity. I do not hide, Daniel... because I don't need to. I don't have to hide my face or my presence. You will see me, Danny, you will know me, and you still won't be able to do a fucking thing to stop me. You are a monster, Danny.. lurking behind the scenes, hiding who you truly are from the world in plain sight.. I am a conqueror... the Barbarian Lord.. who comes at you without fear, without mercy, without reserve and smashes through the gates before burning the village to the ground.."

Vladimir's eyebrows are furrowed with an inner rage that seems to threaten to set off at any moment, but he takes a step back and calms down, thumbing back through the profile in his hands.

"Do you recall that February night, Mirage? The night you stepped into the ring against Wolverina? For all your ruthlessness.. all your talk.. she beat you that night. And it's just so fascinating that that should have happened while you donned that mask... when you were your most vile... because she once came to battle someone else who they called 'evil'... someone else that was ruthless, ungiving and violent... and that man was me, Danny. And would you like to know how that ended for her?"

As the World Champion is rising up, the GodKing grabs a handful of his hair and pulls him back, whispering into his ear from behind.

"I took her just. like. this. And I did, all too literally, what they're going to say I did to you at Xtrememania.."

Vladimir pushes Danny away suddenly and toward the broken glass. The Rubix Cube quickly stops himself and turns around to meet the Barbarian Lord, not one to be pushed around, but the Romanian is already midstrike, swinging the Lionheart title gripped tightly between his hands and pounding it across the forehead of his opponent for the upcoming pay per view. A loud crack calls out through the air as the Prized Gem drops down onto the shards and tiles. Strife turns the title around, gazing with a smirk at the break in the wood climbing from the bottom right hand corner of the main plate almost to the center. Blood runs from the crevice, cast off from the source that pools around Danny's head at Vladimir's feet. With the ever growing smile on his face evident of his satisfaction, Strife at last leaves the tortured soul be, calmly dropping the manila folder of information down beside him before taking his leave.