A/N: Last chapter folks, and it is an irksome, if rather short, ordeal. Anyone who has read this fic and has not read The Reason will now be reading spoilers, and may also now want to check out my other work to fill in the gaps. Talk about a cheap excuse to advertise my own work…

Recap: Kevin graduated from The Academy, Edward formed The Anarchists, Mars failed to graduate, Doomsmane attacked Amy, who was rescued by Kevin, who was then forced to seek aid from Mars, Kevin, Pumpinator and Dial Bolic set off to confront the IWF leaving Mars, The Anarchists and Amy MacLeod far behind them.

Chapter 11 – Scarface

Kevin Mask rolled onto his back, slowly and reluctantly opening his eyes. In those precious moments between the unconscious world of his dreams and the conscious world of reality, Kevin felt himself groan inwardly as the events of the previous day began rushing though his mind.

It was over. All over. Already. His first Chojin Crown tournament, the first "Ikeman Chojin Crown" tournament – or the "Jacqueline McMadd Chojin Crown, depending on how one viewed it – over already.

Kevin slapped a hand onto his forehead, closing his eyes and screwing up his features as he dragged his hand down over his face. Lord Flash had proved that he was not really Lord Flash, but rather Muscle League Legend Chojin Warsman. And, most frustratingly of all for Kevin, Warsman had only agreed to train Kevin because it was an order from Sir Robin Mask himself; the old Legend was so determined to see the Mask family name headline an IWF event, he had made his old friend dress up in a ridiculous disguise and pose under a barely believable pseudonym in order to prime the eldest Mask son for victory.

Kevin dropped his hand back to his side, sighing as he stared up at the roof above him. He was still struggling to come to terms with the outcome of the Chojin Crown tournament. When he had first heard about the tournament, he never could have imagined it would have come to this; he especially had not expected to be facing one of his oldest and longest standing rivals in the final match, a man he was almost certain he had seen the last of after the Generation Ex tournament.

Kevin clawed his sheets off his chest, sitting up with another groan. He ached all over, and even without looking at himself he knew only too well that he was still bruised and battered all over from his match. In particular, the vicious gash down his left side had grown tight and painful. It had been hurriedly stitched shut the day before, but the skin around the wound had swollen around the stitches, stretching them out and only adding to Kevin's agonies.

In all reality, Kevin should have been spending the night in a hospital bed, not his own hotel room; but he had refused to stay in the hospital, mainly because it meant sharing a ward with Mars, but also because it meant being visited by Warsman and his father, neither of whom he was quite ready to confront just yet; especially given the effect the outcome of his match would inevitably have on both his father and the android. After much disagreement on all sides, the medical experts at the hospital had eventually agreed to let Kevin go to his hotel, on the condition that a nurse visited him to check on him that morning.

"Nurse…" Kevin muttered to himself, grabbing up his watch and squinting at it. "It had better not be that green-haired little tease…"

Kevin smacked his watch back down onto his bedside table, pulling the sheets off of his legs and swinging them around to sit on the edge of the bed. Roughly rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes, Kevin yawned openly, silently wishing that he had not agreed to attend a press conference later that day about his final match. He was dreading having to face the press, he was dreading having to face the McMadds, he was dreading having to face the Legends (especially his father and Warsman) and above all, he was dreading having to face Mars, who he had gone to great lengths to avoid thus far.

In Kevin's mind, there was nothing the fans of the IWF, the press, the McMadds, his father, Warsman, the Muscle League or even Mars could say to him right then that would make him feel any better, or indeed any worse, than he already did.

Kevin sighed again, pushing his unruly blonde hair back from his face, running his eyes over his bedside table. He cocked a smirk that Mars would have been proud of as he caught sight of a paperback novel with his own name on it.

"Kevin Mask – The Reason," he said in dramatic voice, grabbing a hand at the book.

As he dragged the book towards himself, it collided with something else on the table, knocking it to the floor.

"Ow!" Kevin whispered as it landed on his foot.

Kevin instantly frowned and shook his head at himself for being so childish as to cry out from such a minor injury. Looking down to see what it was that had fallen, Kevin saw his wallet lying over his right foot, laughing slightly at the irony of his predicament; as if his wallet even contained enough money to be heavy enough to actually hurt him! Kevin dropped his book onto his pillows before bending over to retrieve his wallet, which had snapped open. He closed it over, placing it next to himself on the bed.

"What the…?" he muttered, frowning down at his feet.

On the carpet, a short distance from where his wallet had opened out, laid a small white rectangle. Kevin leaned over, plucking it up curiously.

Pulling it to his face to study it, Kevin saw that it was a tattered old business card that looked as though it had been homemade. On the unprinted side of the card, someone had scrappily written the words "Call me, my Angel" in purple ink that had faded and broken up in places over time. Turning the card over to the printed side, Kevin's face dropped at what he saw. At one side of the card was a picture of a feminine anthro fox, next to which was printed a name and some contact details.

"Amy MacLeod," Kevin read aloud, his voice soft and quiet as he said the name he had almost forgotten about. "Telephone number and email address."

Kevin closed his fist around the card, looking up thoughtfully. Amy MacLeod. It had been so long since he had last seen the girl obsessed with justice, he thought he had forgotten her; but how could he forget someone so irritating, so hell-bent on making his life misery, so intent on seeing him suffer.

Slowly, Kevin turned his head towards the novel lying on his pillow. Still clutching the card in his right hand, Kevin reached over to retrieve the book in his left hand, turning it over to read through the blurb. So much was written in that book and so much had been told on television about Kevin's private affairs before he had appeared in the IWF, even as a member of the DMP, Kevin had always wondered just where the McMadds had gotten all the information from in the first place. As much as he hated all the literature and television programmes that had been made about his life, one point Kevin could never dispute was that they were always accurate to a degree that frightened him.

Kevin had thought the matter over, and had determined that only three people could have passed such information onto the McMadds, namely his former DMP cohort Checkmate, his own father Sir Robin Mask or his younger brother Edward Mask.

But of all of those three men, not one single individual had known everything that had been printed or broadcast about Kevin. Even combined, they could not have known some of the finer points presented in both the book about Kevin and the television programmes there had been.

Kevin slowly opened his fist, looking down at the business card again. Perhaps Checkmate had not known about the promise Kevin had made to his mother on her deathbed, perhaps Robin had not known about the string of criminal and dishonourable activities Kevin had partaken in during his stint in the DMP, and perhaps his brother Edward had not known about Kevin's one-time plans to seize control of the DMP, but one person had known. One person had known all of those things. One person had been there through it all, and had witnessed most of it first-hand.

"Amy MacLeod…" Kevin said softly, placing the card down at his side and taking hold of the novel in both hands.

Kevin began flicking through the book, his brow furrowed intently as he studied the pages of the book, only pausing at certain pictures as he came across them. As he failed to find what he sought, Kevin grew increasingly frustrated, eventually throwing the book at the wall in his ire. He folded his arms tightly over his chest, puffing a blast of air at the hair that had fallen over his eyes, blowing it back from obscuring his vision.

Kevin slowly stood up from the bed, wincing and hissing to himself as he hobbled across the room to the television, switching it on and scooping up the remote control. As Kevin limped back towards his bed, he heard a woman's voice behind him talking about his match the previous day, and what a shocking affair it had been. Kevin spun around and dropped back onto his bed, sitting slouched at the edge of the mattress, facing the television.

Kevin lifted the remote, aiming it at the television, his forefinger touching the surface of one button; but there he stopped. Kevin slowly lowered his hand to his thigh, falling into a numb trance as he watched replays of the key points of his match the previous day. He had never watched one of his own matches before, not even when Lord Flash had tried to make him do so. To Kevin, it had just always seemed like such an unnatural thing to do, to watch himself doing his own job.

He had never before realised just how brutal his matches could be. He had never before realised just how brutal he could be.

Kevin lifted the remote again, readying himself to change the channel, but stopped again as the replay of the move that had ended the match was acted out before his eyes in super-slow motion. As he watched the expressions on both his own exposed face and Mars's, the looks of despair and determination they each wore respectively, Kevin was suddenly unable to look away. Despite the fact that Kevin's sleep had been haunted with nightmares of that moment, that brief, instant in time, a moment that had taken little more than a few seconds to transpire, yet had felt like an eternity, like it had happened in super-slow motion, just like it was happening on the replay on the television, Kevin had to watch as the answer to the question both he and Mars had always asked themselves was finally realised.

The camera panned over to the booth the McMadds had sat in throughout the match. As Kevin watched, Vance closed his eyes and turned his head away, Ikeman screamed and ducked under the table and even the self-professed lover of all things violent, Jacqueline McMadd, fainted at what she saw. The camera then flashed to a shot of the IWF's colour commentators, Doc Nakano and Mac Metaphor, who looked about as exhausted as Kevin had felt after the match. Mac Metaphor was on his feet yelling something out through an enormous grin of delight, and at his side, Doc Nakano was wiping the sweat from his brow with a hanker-chief whilst adjusting his toupee with his other hand. Kevin's face twisted as he watched them; for two individuals who were paid very highly to be unbiased, they were certainly showing just who their favourite had been throughout the final of the Chojin Crown.

Grumbling in disgust, Kevin pointed the remote at the television again, but again he stopped. This time he was being subjected to a shot of Roxanne, Trixie and Kiki. Their facial expressions were enough to make him growl to himself in anger – they were doing nothing to hide their feelings regarding the outcome, and making it quite clear to any who may have doubted their allegiances that they were fully supporting Mars – but Kevin's attention was held as the camera slowly drew back, widening the shot to encapsulate more of the front row.

Terry Kenyon, Dik Dik Van Dik, Jaeger, Broken Junior, Kid Muscle, Meat, Marie, the Tusket family; they were all there, and they were all apparently of the same opinion: Mars was their favourite. Warsman came into view, walking away from the ring, his head hanging low. Kevin watched on in horrified fascination as his own father, Robin Mask, met Warsman halfway down the aisle, and the two walked on towards the backstage area together without so much as a backward glance at the fallout from the result of the match in the ring.

"Bastards…" Kevin grumbled, readying himself to switch the television off again.

But again Kevin saw something that captivated his attention. It was something shocking, something sickening, something disgusting, something disturbing, something so unexpected the very sight of it made Kevin drop the remote to the floor, where the batteries fell out, removing the option of changing the channel or switching the television off without first crossing the room. It was something so unbelievable, it almost seemed perfectly logical.

One side of Kevin's mouth curled into a grin; although he was not entirely sure what sort of grin it was. Only half of him saw the need to grin at anything, and even that half was not entirely sure if it felt the depth of irony of the situation, if it was amused or if it was actually happy with what it saw.

Standing at one end of the line of familiar faces that filled the front row was a tall, scrawny looking young woman, with Mars's headdress draped over one arm and Kevin's mask clutched in her other hand. She was grinning brightly up at the ring, apparently highly pleased with the result of the match she had just watched. She could have passed by the attention of most as being just another wrestling fan, and even Kevin would have overlooked her under normal circumstances; but the two deep scars that ran diagonally over her face gave her identity away.

Kevin's face dropped; those nagging, distracting insults a female voice had been screaming at him throughout the match had not come from Kiki as he had suspected. He should have known it was not Kiki, her accent was wrong, her tone far too irritating. All those taunts, all misplaced cheers, they had all come from that one scar-faced girl.

"Amy MacLeod…" Kevin muttered, narrowing his eyes at the all-too-familiar face of the girl cheering for the result of the match. "You conniving little bitch…"

A/N(2): For the rest of this story, I again refer you to my other works. I should perhaps now refer back to my original claim regarding the purpose of this fic. I said this fic was a prequel to I Want You Bad and a background story of Mars and Kevin's time in the DMP.

But there's more.

This fic was also my excuse to write a sequel to The Reason.