In honor of the best fighter of all time and it's most enduring character, I present:
Nineteen Years Later
Candy first sees him in person again after one of her exhibitions. It's fashion week in Hong Kong and the crowds are much heavier than usual. Still, she could never mistake that long hair and trademark bad boy smirk. Death Crunch might have gone the way of most all hair bands of the '80's and '90's, but Raxel didn't let that stop him. Nothing, she thinks, can keep that man down. He was one of the scariest she fought seventeen years ago and again two years before that. Candy is still surprised she ranked just beneath him the first time.
She still monitors most of her former competitors. She likes to see how they are doing after all these years, compare successes. She talks to Grace and Tokio sometimes and has even booked Grace once or twice for some of her edgier designs.
Grace looks much older now. They all do. Except Raxel, it seems.
"How you been?" He asks, casually, as passersby jostle and bump against him. Candy vividly recalls the way he broke her armor mid fight by slamming his guitar into her side. Three broken ribs and she had to suffer the indignity of finishing the fight in nothing but her undergarments. She can feel the pinch in her side now.
The people swirl messily around the two so frozen in time. Candy imagines them as brightly colored dots in a sea of formal black.
"Good," she says, after a moment. As if he's a friend. As if she's glad to see him. "I've been good."
Raxel doesn't move away despite pressure from the crowd. She feels it herself and wants to drift apart from this man but remains frozen. Their eyes lock for a heated second before his lower. Candy thinks the worst, but then-
"Nice boots."
They are Candy's signature bright red and she still makes them look good.
"Thanks," she says, her friendly tone belying her confidence and pride. "They're new."
One reddish blonde eyebrow raises high and he smiles.
"I bet they've sold."
"Ten-thousand units so far." The much-parroted statistic comes out of her mouth almost too fast. Candy shrinks a little before his smirk makes her realize her mistake. She is thirty-five now, not sixteen. She has a fruitful career as a designer with thousands of dedicated followers. Candy shouldn't feel intimidated. But she does. And he knows it. She wonders if he can actually smell these things on people.
"Epic," Raxel says, and suddenly Candy finds herself laughing. He grins a bit, noticing her noticing his keeping up with the times.
"What are you doing here?" Candy feels more at ease now. She reminds herself that she doesn't really know Raxel, not then and not now. Their fights and a few random encounters are all she has to go on and it's not as if either of them were being especially social back then. They talked with their fists (and his Gibson Flying-V) and nothing else. It was a harsh, dirty time that left its mark on her.
"We're playin' a show, yeah?"
Candy lifts an eyebrow in question. She wonders if Death Crunch is doing some kind of reunion tour.
"My newest band," Raxel says, with a smile. "You should come. You and your pigtails."
Candy's hand instinctively goes to her hair. They both grin in tandem.
"What can I say? It's part of my signature look too." Candy's theme has always included fire engine red and a side of cute.
"For sure. So?"
Candy promises she will. After all, her gig is up and she has nowhere to be.
"Rad." Raxel pulls out a sharpie and holds his hand out for hers. She shakes her head.
"No way! Text it to me."
Raxel catches himself and looks ready to face palm.
"Riiiiiight. Sorry, running into you made me feel all kinds of nostalgic."
Candy just shakes her head and gives him her digits.
He washes into the crowd with a wink and a laugh.
Later, when Candy is halfway to the concert hall, she realizes she never actually asked Raxel the name of his band. It didn't matter to her. She wanted to go for him, so she didn't think to ask. She regrets it now, alone in Hong Kong, and unsure what she's about to get herself into.
She starts to see banners with Raxel's face on them, but can't quite translate the hanzi into her native language. There is some crossover between Japanese and Mandarin, but not enough in this case.
"Corroded decoy peaches?" That's totally not it. "Brilliant horse meat peaches?" Noooo and nope. The combination doesn't make sense grammatically or...any other way!
At least until a nearby person speaks.
"Rotten Cherries," the woman says in English and again in Japanese.
Candy lights up like a Christmas tree.
"Thank you!"
She giggles to herself, thinking of how perfect a name like that is for an Eastern band. If she'd just heard it and not seen the banners, she never would've thought Raxel a member.
She muses on that the rest of the way to the hall.
Candy is so, so surprised to see Raxel speaking fluent Mandarin onstage. He looks good up there with the rest of the band and their music isn't bad either. The crowd loves him, cheers him.
Candy stands out from the rest of them, but then she's used to being the center of attention-just maybe not this kind of attention. She decided to wear her take on retro Gothic Lolita today. It seemed like a good way to finish things, but with all these people side-eyeing her, she wishes she wore a few less frills and maybe added a few more spikes. Candy certainly would have chosen a different color than neon blue if she'd really thought about it.
But she hadn't been thinking. She'd just been...well, excited!
When Raxel finds her, he gives a huge grin through his caked on makeup and suddenly being a bright blue flower in a sea of black doesn't seem so bad.
Candy joins the celebration, aware that Raxel's eyes seldom stray. She meets his gaze and fist pumps with the rest.
It's a 'rad' show as Raxel would have said. Afterwards, security finds her and guides her to the back where Raxel and the rest of the band are waiting. A couple of the members know her and surprise! One of them is actually wearing her now. Candy smiles. They all smile, and she thinks this could be the beginning of something wonderful.