Dead or Alive and its characters are owned by Tecmo and Team Ninja. I merely own the laptop on which this story was typed.
Any questions can be sent to the email address in my profile.
Temet Nosce – Ch. 1
Music swelled and filled the air, touching every cell in the young woman's body. She breathed it in; letting the music soar within her, down to her core then back upwards. She opened her mouth to let it out, transformed into the first notes of the aria.
Screams filled the air. Helena found herself sprawled on the stage floor; a sharp pain in her left shoulder. She was confused – how did I get here? The music had stopped and the only thing louder than the chaos of the audience was the pounding of her pulse inside her head.
The time slowed. Her mother – who just moments before had proudly stood at her side as they performed their first ever duet – stepped into the spotlight. She stood, shielding her daughter from the balconies, her form haloed by the light.
She looks like an angel…so beautiful, Helena thought.
The report of the gun shattered that beauty. For a moment, the body of her mother hung suspended, and then snapped backward from the bullet's impact. Helena flinched as the blood struck her face, the reality of it all soaking in as her eyes found her mother's dead ones as they lay together upon the stage.
Horror. Alone. Lonely. Sad. Hurt. Afraid.
No!
Helena woke up tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, barely containing the scream she felt inside her. Short, shallow breaths were gradually replaced with longer, deeper ones as she glanced about the darkened room. Her aqua-green eyes adjusted to the dim lighting as she made out the familiar objects – the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the door, her suitcase, the wardrobe…
Be aware of what is. Not what was. Her master taught her that.
Disengaging herself from the sheets, she swung her long legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. Snapping on the light upon the nightstand, Helena breathed a sigh and relaxed. The clock on the nightstand showed 5AM. She looked across the room to where a table, chair, and bench stood. On the bench were the outfits she had selected for today's sparring and tonight's match. On the table lay her credentials, a roster profiling the participants of the tournament, as well as schedule of the Tournament, and a locked black box.
This is not the life of an opera star. Yet as soon as the thought crossed her mind, Helena realized too that she had been preparing for this moment long before she knew it was to happen.
Her mother had always believed that a woman can be elegant and refined, yet also be strong and powerful as well. She encouraged her daughter to learn how to take care of herself at an early age. Helena never could quite figure out how her mother managed to pay for both her voice lessons and her martial arts lessons with her mezzo soprano's salary. Pi qua quan – Helena had chose that particular form for its grace – was a rare discipline to find a teacher in.
Helena hardly knew her father, the late Fame Douglas, founder of DOATEC and its fight tournament, which it sponsored yearly. Her mother always told her he was a very busy man "doing very important things". She was told that she should be proud of him. Occasionally, he would visit Helena and her mother at the home he had provided for them. She remembered the delight she felt as he always had a present for her each time he came. As she grew older, his visits became less and less until he stopped coming altogether. Then one day, he invited them to DOATEC headquarters. While they were there, an accident happened in one of the labs they had been touring. A test subject, the researcher had called him, reacted violently to a test they were performing. Helena could remember how she and her mother looked on in horror as the security guards brought him to bay using stun batons. Douglas was furious over the incident. They cut their visit short, despite her father's protests, and in spite of her mother's promises to him, they did not return. A few weeks later, Douglas was dead.
Yawning, she reached down to retrieve her dressing gown, which had fallen from its place on the bed. She donned it and crossed the room to the table, her hand fondling the key in the pocket of her gown. She paused before the box, as if hesitant to open it, feeling very much like the mythical Pandora. Then she shrugged, sat down, and placed the key into the lock. The lid opened silently, as it always did, to reveal the very thick file branded with the DOATEC insignia. On top of the file was a short note, written in indistinguishable block handwriting. It had been mailed to her with the file shortly after her mother's death. It read:
TO FIND YOUR MOTHER'S MURDERER, YOU MUST FIRST FIND OUT ABOUT YOURSELF. THIS FILE MAY BE OF SOME INTEREST TO YOU.
- A FRIEND
Helena lifted the hefty file from the box and proceeded to flip through its contents as she had done countless of times before. The first pages were photocopies of the will of Fame Douglas. While most of it she felt was inconsequential to her, it was the final few lines that she had highlighted:
"And finally, the DOATEC and all of its holdings I am passing into the hands of my daughter, Helena Douglas. As her mother was the only woman I ever truly loved, and the guilt I have for not doing right by them will haunt me for all eternity, it is only fair that I give control of my corporate empire to the fruit of our love. If my passing occurs before Helena's coming of age, DOATEC will be held in trust for her by Dr. Victor Donovan, DOATEC's Chairman, until her age of majority."
After the will came a few newspaper clippings regarding Douglas and DOATEC, two which caught her eye, "Douglas to pull plug on bioenhancement research", and "DOATEC OWNER MURDERED!". The latter's date was just mere months before the murder of Helena's mother. The last item was what made up the majority of the file.
Titled "Project Epsilon" it was a research log that tracked the progress of various top-secret experiments conducted upon a person they labeled "Test Subject One". Helena barely understood half of the log- what wasn't blacked out- but the photographs filled in the gaps. The pictures depicted a young Asian man who was about her age. The first photos show him in a wheelchair, body broken and crippled. The photos went into detail of the procedures that were tried upon him. The final pictures depicted Test Subject One as he was put through tests of his physical and mental stamina, clearly showing him growing more and more uncontrollable. The log described him as "becoming difficult to handle" and how scientists had used stun guns to keep him in submission after one experiment went haywire.
I was there, she thought, it was the day Mother and I were visiting. So much for being top-secret…
The final page of the "Project Epsilon" file concluded that the experiments were a failure and that the best course of action was to shut the program down and have Test Subject One terminated.
And they couldn't even do that right, Helena mused.
She grasped the participant profiles and flipped through it until she found what she was looking for. It was the profile of the man, Ein, her opponent for this evening's fight. Aside from his physical stats, profession, and fighting style, the profile had very little information on him. Helena held up a photo of Test Subject One next to the one in Ein's profile. They were one and the same.
Either he doesn't want to know about him, or he truly doesn't know himself, Helena thought, eyeing both images. Whatever the case, he was obviously a piece in her puzzle. He may have killed her mother, or father, or both. If he did, she thought, fists clenching the profiles and photo tight, she would have her revenge. If he did not, he probably knew who did. She will have her answers tonight.
Finished with her reverie, Helena stood up and stretched, wincing in reaction to the slight twinge she felt in her left shoulder, a reminder of that fateful night which led her down this path. Daylight had begun to creep into the room, its rosy glow catching in the golden tendrils of her hair.
Today is going to be a long wait, she thought.
Mid-morning she was scheduled to practice with her tag-team partner, Lei Fang which left her the rest of the day to prepare for her match. Plenty of time, she smiled, to seek out and speak with the one person who may give her further insight on her upcoming fight.
"I must speak with Ryu Hyabusa," she murmured aloud to the room. She then turned on her heel and padded toward the bathroom to get ready for her day.
