Street Fighter: Destiny Wind
Original Fanfiction by: Ichabod Crofte

Chapter One: In The Mountains, There is Hope

Mountains outside Dhangadhi
Nepal-India borderlands
January 3, 2001

The wheels of the jeep squealed and hissed as they grappled for purchase upon the icy slopes of the mountain road. The driver, who the foreigner had paid well, seemed fearless. Snow was falling heavily now as compared to the benign, occasional flaking they'd seen when they left the city behind them. Now they had entered a forbidding world of frost, danger, and death. And there was no turning back.

The foreigner squinted. Through the snowy fog, he could just make out the silhouette of a large, military structure built into the very rock of the precipice. As the jeep drew near the installation, the foreigner turned to the driver, and shouted over the storm.

"That's a prison!" he yelled.

"Yes sir," the Sherpa replied. "It is indeed a prison."

"You didn't tell me he was in a prison!"

"You had not asked, sir!" shouted the driver.

The foreigner was concerned. He had expected the meeting to be in a far more private and secluded environment; there were Shadowlaw spies aplenty even in these inhospitable lands.

"Well what's he done to go to jail for?" cried the foreigner.

They reached the entrance gate and the jeep drew to a stop.

"He murdered a military official," the Sherpa responded. "He has been here for nearly five years already without trial."

"Well that's not right! Without trial?" protested the foreigner.

"That is their nature, sir," the driver told him. "Even the lawmen here are without law."

"Aren't you going in?"

The Sherpa shook his head vigorously. "I would rather endure Vajrapani's holy wrath than to enter that prison," he shuddered. "You will see horrible things, American. Horrible things."

The foreigner hopped out of the jeep and drew back his hood. He ran his hand through his golden blonde hair.

"I don't believe he murdered anyone," Ken muttered. "It just doesn't fit his character."

The American turned and paid the Sherpa.

"You've been kind and helpful, and you have my thanks. God be with you."

"I will pray that both your God and Buddha are compassionate," smiled the Sherpa, shifting the jeep in reverse.

Ken took a deep breath and strode forward as two mean-looking guards approached him.

"You're the American?" one of them rasped, flashing a mouth full of copper teeth.

"Do I look Nepalese to you?" Ken retorted, unfolding a wad of money from his jacket. He handed each of the two soldiers a one hundred dollar bill. "Show me where he is."

The interior of the prison was quite possibly colder than it had been outside. The rancid stench of death and decay hung in the air, causing Ken's nose to wrinkle. The corpses of dead rats dappled the urine-soaked floors of narrow corridors, dimly lit, each identical to the next. Finding his way back would require his wits be at their sharpest.

Two more guards joined the party as they descended down into the icy bowels of the mountain fortress. Ken drew his jacket tightly about him. The guard beside Ken, a skinny young man with a shaven head and a harelip, noticed Ken's discomfort.

"Unbearable at first, it seems," he whispered as if he was violating the sanctity of a secret or military code, "but easier it gets when you inhabit here for long time."

Ken nodded, barely piecing together the man's fractured English.

After what seemed like a frigid eternity, they reached the bottom of the stairwell.

"Wouldn't an elevator have been easier?" wondered Ken aloud.

"Hah!" scoffed one of the guards he'd met outside. "Where do you think you are, boy? The Taj Mahal?"

The other officers snickered.

As they reached the last cell, the guard gestured towards a small steel door with a tiny window slot near the bottom of it.

"He's in there," he said, pressing a nearby button upon the wall causing the mechanized latches to be drawn. "You've got ten minutes. Make them count."

The door groaned open, and Ken's eyes adjusted to the gloom. He took one of the wall torches from its sconce and entered the cell.

The silence of the chamber was so intense that it almost deafened the American. But perhaps it was a ruse. Ken strained his ears, and heard what most ordinary men would never have been able to perceive: deep, reverberant chanting. White eyes gleamed in the rear of the cell. Ken approached, and his torch flickered wanly.

Ken Masters...

The American thought he heard his name echoing all about him. He thrust the torch forward, but it went out. In the duskiness of the chamber, Ken made out the skeletal form of the yoga master he had come so far to meet.

"Dhalsim," he whispered.

Yoga flame...

They weren't really words. They were intangible thoughts that whorled about him like chasmal echoes in the dark. Instantly, his torch flared brightly, illuminating his way. There, before him, sat Dhalsim, his legs crossed, his arms outstretched, thumbs pressed to middle fingers in solemn meditation.

"You are the yoga master Dhalsim are you not?" Ken asked.

"Time reveals all that you seek," answered Dhalsim cryptically.

"I haven't got time for riddles!" the American said, urgency in his tone. "I need your help."

The flames of Ken's torch bent unnaturally. Dhalsim's white eyes gleamed with interest.

"Why should I help you, Ken Masters? We have never met, and I owe you nothing."

"That is true that we have never met," Ken countered, "and yet you already seem to know who I am."

"I merely listened to the wind," the yoga master said.

"And it is also true that you owe me nothing,"Ken went on. "But you do have debts to another."

Dhalsim's colorless eyes narrowed. "I have no such debts."

Ken opened one of the pockets of his jacket. As he procured a folded piece of paper, he continued his story. "Once, many years ago, Shadowlaw soldiers came looking for you while you were in India. Among them was a nefarious boxer named Balrog. He and his associates killed your wife, Sally. But a young man from Japan defeated Balrog and saved your son, Datta. Do you remember, yoga master?"

Ken's torched dimmed.

Ryu...

The sound of the name rippled through Ken's mind like a perfectly round pebble being dropped into a tranquil pond.

"You said that if he ever needed your help, you would be there for him. Now, Dhalsim, is that time."

Dhalsim's narrow fingers brushed across the small skulls of the children he wore around his neck. Each skull was the memory of a child that had died in his arms of plague that had decimated his village. Hundreds had perished to its clutches. Life, Dhalsim had come to realize, is as fragile as it is sacred. Many years ago, he had swore an oath never to use his power again, fearing it would corrupt his soul as it had so many others.

Ken handed the faded letter to the yoga master. Dhalsim's arm stretched unnaturally to take it from the American. He studied it carefully as Ken filled him in on the details.

"A year ago this day, I received this letter written the night before the new millennium. It's Ryu's penmanship. In that letter, he says he was very close to finding the man that killed our master and sensei, Gouken. He wrote me that he was going to find this man, and destroy him, even if it meant the immolation of his own soul. When I trained with Gouken many years ago, he told me this day would come, the day that Ryu would seek to reconcile with the warrior spirit inside of him, but that he would not be ready to accept the answers he would find. I must, find Ryu, Dhalsim, before he meets his end at the hand of an opponent far more powerful than he can imagine."

The yoga master stirred uncomfortably. "That day in the market I had been talked into participating in a sparring demonstration with a sumo wrestler from Japan. I had sensed an enormous emanation of chi from somewhere in the crowd. It was like a lotus flower in winter: a sleeping power waiting to bloom into something magnificent and rare. When the soldiers attacked the village, I was preoccupied with fighting, unable to save my family. I met briefly the Japanese warrior Ryu, but I did not sense the same power as I had earlier, for I was overwhelmed with grief, unable to focus. I gave him my word that I would repay him for saving my son, and then he disappeared from my life forever.

"Not long after, I swore an oath to the great God of Fire, Aguni, that I would never again use my abilities to perpetuate the violence that is consuming our world." Dhalsim was silent for a moment as he turned deep thoughts and memories over one another in his mind. "Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."

"Will you help me?" Ken asked vehemently.

"I thought I could escape destiny in this dark place," Dhalsim replied softly, "but it would appear as though my powers are ill suited for torpidity. I shall break one vow to fulfill another." He gazed up at Ken. "Let us together find the Japanese warrior, Ryu."