Street Fighter V: Prologue 1 - After Disappearance
The dull sound of a man's skull hitting the ground rang out through the alley. A tall, slim figure stood above him, looking down on the now unconscious opponent. Exhaling a sigh into the cold night, Remy watched his breath rise like a fog into the night sky. Too many fights ended this way. He wanted more like the few fights in that tournament two years ago. Not this pathetic excuse for a battle, where he still had breath to spare. The desire sickened him, the young man closing his eyes to the sight of his pulped opponent, a hand raising to drag across his long, morose features and through the long turqoise hair.
Why must I have this desire?
Remy turned from the unconscious man, a mere brawler who'd attained an attitude of superiority thanks to his victory in a few barfights. Zipping his jacket up to the very top, he finally felt the cold shiver of the night.
This desire left me and my sister alone. Had it not coursed through my father's veins, she would have survived her illness, I know it.
Moving along the street, forgetting the scene in the alley to be embraced instead by the constant rush of cars through the dark, crisp London air.
Was it hereditary? Is there some part of my blood that biologically must boil at the idea of an equal match?
It was the invitation that ignited this sleeping urge once more. It lay still on his hotel room's desk, opened, read and re-read a thousand times. How did it find him? How could they find a man who disappeared so completely? Obviously, he didn't disappear well enough.
"I'm doing this to save you!" He gestured wildly at his sister, the young blonde sitting on the open sill of the window in a pair of red shorts and a loose fitting white t-shirt, one of his own. She looked away from him, instead, watching the quiet Marseille coast.
"I won't survive this, Remy." She smiled sadly at him. It was difficult to be angry with him. Even if he betrayed them both. "It's advanced too far already."
Remy's fist pounded against the wall of their small apartment. Leaning forward, his head on his forearm as he leaned on the wall, he shook his head.
"You will survive." He replied. "With enough money, you will survive."
The diagnosis, the sudden knowledge of his sister's ill-health, despite how well she seemed, even now as they had this discussion, shook him to his core. How could the reaper be at the door of someone so unready? Did death really have to come to those who had not yet even experienced life?
"That wouldn't be enough to get even a check-up with a private doctor!" She shouted, pointing to the small pile of Franc notes on the table. She didn't like using this against him, but she had to make him stop somehow.
"Then I'll get stronger," he murmured, looking straight forward at his shadow on the white paint. "I'm not doing this for fun, sister. I end all fights as quickly as I can. An old street fighter is teaching me Savate. It's the most effective technique I've seen!"
He turned to look at her, a smile on his lips as he moved towards her, holding his hands out to take her own.
"I'll get into fights with higher prize money. I'll become the best fighter in the world for you."
"Given our father, that's such a twisted dream," that tearful smile of hers reappeared. "I'm hoping you've become a comedian, Remy. I'm not sure I can take such a truth."
"I can't give up on you so easily...." He whispered.
"Remy, my brother...."
He had failed her. She ended her own pain before he could make the money to start her treatment. So close to the 1999 tournament he'd signed up for. Yet he still competed. A grudge against all fighters, he called it. That was a pitiful joke, he realised. The longer he stayed in England, his new home, the more he realised, with terrible clarity, that some part of him, some instinct, some part not of his own mind, that he had enjoyed it.
The darkness that spawned that desire to fight. It was the same as the darkness that both hated and understood his father. How it roared when his sister died. In coming to England with the idea of starting a new life, he tried to turn his back on it. There were times when he'd been pushed to fight and unleashed the full force of his Savate. Accidental, he'd told himself. As for sizing up every fighter he'd seen on television, or any man of notable physique who entered the pub he haunted, that was simply the instinct he'd developed, he reasoned, no way to get rid of that.
It took one letter, one invitation to make him realise how stupid he'd been all this time. How excitement pulsed through him at the idea of a fighting tournament, of his ability to enter, especially of how someone specifically considered him. That letter was what made him rush out to find this fight. This dissatisfying, quick, easy fight, just to confirm what he'd been missing. That what he'd turned his back on was his only livelihood left.
Walking into the night, Remy decided to turn towards that darkness once more, with the hopes of erasing it. The flame of battle burned in his heart. He would let it run wild, until it could burn no more.
But first thing's first. He had come to London for one other reason that lurked in his heart, hidden under the darkness he refused to look to. There was one English fighter in particular he was interested in.