Author's Note: Written on a whim. I was watching Moulin Rouge and felt rather inspired by the Tango de Roxanne, which is my favorite part.
The setting for this one is different than my other MI stories. It takes place three weeks after 2k6, and uses Soiree, Alba and Lien's endings as cannon. Why? Because that's probably the way SNK is going to decide it's going to be. I like Lien's story mode a lot... and I'm now a big fan of Lien/Duke. It's a very... tumultuous pairing. A lot of angst.
Once again, I am sorry for making Soiree the asshole in my fanfiction. I'm not trying to do it! It just happens! I'll have to write another fic where he's the good guy.
So, in case you have an aversion to certain pairings, these are the ones featured: Alba Meira/Chae Lim, Duke/Lien Neville, Kyo Kusanagi/Chizuru Kagura.
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Even My Shadow Left Me.
A post MI2 fanfiction by Strike To Incinerate.
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"I want to get a job in the police force," she told him, as plainly as she could, leaning against the wall, her dark gray eyes locked on his.
He wanted to laugh; the King of Southtown and the leader of it's up and coming new gang, with a cop for a girlfriend. But he didn't laugh. He knew she hated it when people didn't take her seriously, and she seemed pretty serious about this.
"I mean it. I want to help you protect Southtown... but I want to do it legally. I'm not going to be an accessory to your vigilantism forever. It's just... I'm not the kind of person who can live with that," she told him, moving away from the wall to the sink. The dishes weren't going to do themselves, and with Alba's brother still missing, she was the only one who could do them.
'Says the girl who grew up with a best friend that thought she was a superhero, and a teacher that thought one could combat evil with a blinding smile and Taekwondo. Alright, you're really righteous, Chae Lim,' the redhead thought, but he held his tongue. She was washing a butcher knife, and he didn't doubt that she had amazing aim as well as lightning reflexes.
"That's... fair," he finally said.
"Why don't you tell me what you really think?" she asked him, glancing over her shoulder.
He knew he shouldn't, that it would only end in a fight, but he also knew that she'd pester him until he came out with it. She was near impossible to live with sometimes, but he admired her perserverence, and she was the shoulder that he leaned on when Soiree was kidnapped and he realized that that woman, as beautiful as she was, was all Area 51 stories and bullshit. Chae Lim was kind and honest, even if she wasn't the most gorgeous woman who ever entered the KOF. The supermodel ones were all airheads and assassins and confusing...
"I think..." he began, "that I would rather have you here, helping me. How much good are you going to do as a meter maid or a secretary? You won't be able to track down Addes or find Soiree... and it's possible that they won't even hire you because of me," he told her, standing up and abandoning his chair.
She stopped rinsing off a plate, and turned off the faucet. "I know that... but I have to try. I'd never be able to live with myself if I just turned a blind eye to crime in the name of a good cause without trying the... legal way. You understand that, don't you?" she asked him.
He didn't. He didn't understand it at all... maybe that was because he'd been raised by a man who believed that the law was not the absolute authority in Southtown. Now, because of Addes, he knew that the law was worth shit. He had no right to keep her from doing what he thought was necessary, the same way she had never tried to push the justice she and all of Kim's disciples peddled onto him.
"Yeah. I understand..." he said, folding his arms over his chest. "But I want to see you in that uniform at least once outside of the station."
She made a small gasp and threw the damp dishtowel at him. He ducked and made a charge for her.
--
Cat-like yellow eyes closed, and large, calloused hands massaged tanned and scarred temples in annoyance and frustration... a little bit of worry, as well.
She couldn't take care of everything on her own. She couldn't even take care of herself. She couldn't even take care of him.
He could hear the zipper sliding down... downdowndown. She always did that just before, or just after a mission was complete. How one woman could wear so much yellow and black and not look like a bumblebee was beyond him, but she didn't look like any insect at all... She was gorgeous, and not against using that on her mission.
They weren't agents of Addes any longer. He was a child of Kokaviel, but a traitor... his fists clenched and unclenched. Before, those tactics were justified, anything for the cause... now they seemed outdated, trashy... like she was giving herself away.
He couldn't bare that, but she had ordered him not to leave the apartment. Through everything, Lien cared for him, and he was amazed. He had hurt her so much, and one simple act had opened the way for her to show that she didn't hate him. Taking an energy blast to the chest hadn't hurt as much as watching Jivatma throw her around that room, slamming her against the thick stone walls and floor. Finally, she had proved that no one else could be the personal assassin to the leader of Mephistopheles. Only... Jivatma had gotten away.
He had certainly alerted the other children of Kokaviel, so their road to vengance would have to be paved immediately, before Addes got to them first.
Lien was out there by herself, seducing the enemy and eliminating them, and he wanted to destroy the entire apartment.
Instead, he just lay there in bed, staring at the cieling, and reminded himself that he would have the oppurtunity to take that anger out on Addes... not Lien's furniture.
It didn't ease the dull, hollow ache in his chest.
When would she return?
--
"You think I didn't know what your fucking game was?!"
A gun. She generally didn't have problems with guns, but they usually weren't pointed at her face.
She blinked and asked, "What game?"
Pistol whip. She recoiled, fighting the instinct to cup her cheek. She would need that hand for something else. Instead, she just glared at him as he pulled back the hammer. It made a sharp click.
All he had to do was pull the trigger, and he knew that, too. She could tell by the smug grin on his face and the way his eyes got large and beady...
Sodding asswipe. She'd enjoy this. After what she just went through, she deserved to.
"What are you going to do, shoot me?" she asked him. "Hand my body over to your boss for a nice pay day?" she sneered, righting herself. It was so strange, hearing those words from her mouth, after hearing them so often from the other side...
He grabbed a chunk of her loose blond curls, wrenching her head back. "No. I'm going to torture you until you tell me where that traitor pig is hiding. He turned away from his only benefactors to save your fatass..." Another pistol whip, but the adrenaline had already begun pumping, so it didn't seem to sting as much.
Sticky, coppery, disgusting. She spit the magenta blood and saliva mixture into his face. Rolling her tongue around in her mouth as he tossed her away violently, she could feel a tooth coming loose. One more pistol whip, and she'd be missing a right molar.
"You're gonna regret that one bitch. Tell me where he is," he finished wiping his face with his sleeve, and pointed the M9 at her leg, "or I blow out your fucking kneecap."
She could see his finger tightening on the trigger.
"Sod off, prick," she told him, sweeping her foot, catching his ankle and tripping him. Her leg neatly came up and back down again, and stiletto heel slamming into his sternum. He gave a grunt and a cough of pain, and she stood up. His gun had fallen out of his hand, and she kicked it away.
"I love seeing the look on a man's face when the tables turn so suddenly..." she said, a grin tugging at the corners of her lips as one hand gently and slowly pulled the zipper of her signature leather jacket down to her waist. There was a bounce, and even as he laid there in pain, disarmed and at a disadvantage, his eyes were drawn to her ample cleavage.
She kicked him in the face, and over he rolled.
He was next to the couch now. His hand slipped under it, and before she could stop him, he pulled out a sawed off twelve gauge, and aimed it at her.
She regretted not doing a better weapons check, but she had wanted this to be quick and clean so she could get back to Duke. Her mind had been elsewhere, and now, she might have to pay for it.
As long as they never found Duke, she figured that everything would be even.
She ducked under the coffee table just as the shell fired, scattering shot into wood and dry wall and furniture, but luckily, not into her.
She kicked the table over, knocking him back, and she heard a snap. Reload, ready to fire.
She stayed behind the upheaved table and waited for another blast to tear the cheap wood apart. It never came.
But an impressive thump and splintering sound did. She peeked over the table, amazed at what she saw.
A tall, well-built man with short silver-white hair, and the remains of a chair in his hand. Black sweatpants and a white t-shirt... but no smile, no warmth in his eyes.
"One of the few things I hate more than you are woman beaters," he said shortly, tossing the chair onto the fallen Addes member.
"Thanks..." she mumbled, standing. Her outfit was ripped and ruined.
"Don't thank me, just get out of here now, before I find another chair," he told her. "Not that I'd need one."
Soiree Meira never made ill-hearted jokes. This man looked like Soiree Meira, but he wasn't Soiree Meira at all. Those blue eyes were once as warm and welcoming as a cloudless summer sky, now they were sharp and cold like ice.
"Your brother is looking for you. He even got a girlfriend to help him," she told him.
"I know all about Lakia... and I'll deal with her soon," he said, turning to head towards the door.
"Soiree," she said, and he didn't acknowledge her. "That woman isn't with him."
"I don't care. I'll deal with her, regardless."
This man didn't speak like Soiree Meira at all. His speech was refined and unyeilding... not loose and easygoing.
"And my name is not Soiree," he finally turned to look at her again. "It's Judiem."
A wave of silver rode across his eyes, so quickly that Lien almost believed it to be a trick of the light.
No, this man was not Soiree Meira at all.
Lien didn't care much... all she cared about now was getting back to Duke.
--
Kyo Kusanagi watched out the window as the plane took off, to carry him away from Southtown and back to Japan. This Maximum Impact tournament was bullshit; underground syndicate? Please, NESTS was so six years ago. What was worse was that he had wasted a whole month, no sign of Ash Crimson anywhere... Chizuru was waiting for him. What if Ash go--
Chizuru was waiting for him? Hadn't he meant Yuki? He hadn't called her Chizuru on the phone... had he? He had called Yuki by her own name, right?
Chizuru was fine. Why should he worry about her?
As the plane left the tarmac, he swore he saw a flash of red down below.
When he closed his eyes, all he could see was a whitewhite room and a bigbig window and Chizuru sitting there, holding Shingo's hand and making him promise to take care of him and Yagami. He had to go into the not-white hall and wait. He heard Chizuru coughing, and Shingo panicking and yelling for a nurse, and then a wry chuckle; Chizuru made the kid calm down.
His fists had clenched and unclenched so many times as he saw green flames and remembered what it felt like to cradle Chizuru's limp body, her skin paler than ever, her ebony hair whispering against his sleeve. His hand had burned hotter and his eyes filled with anger more intense than he'd ever felt towards Yagami.
"It is now safe to use your phones on the plane," came the announcement on the intercom.
Kyo reached into the pocket of his jacket, and pulled out his cellphone. Flipping it open, he scrolled down to not the first contact on his list, but the second.
"Chizu? It's Kyo," he said, and the relief that spread over him was more calming than a gallon of morphine.
--
Blue shimmers across the endless night sky... the sea of stars shining and rippling just for him, so perfect with those little pinpoints of light... and he could touch them.
A wave of silver rode across the sky like a shooting star, and Alba turned to smile at Soiree.
Soiree smiled, and faded away.
Alba's hands gripped Chae Lim's waist tighter as he forced himself to awake. He could feel her there, but he couldn't see her yet. His eyes wouldn't open, his dreams were holding him back.
He hated these dreams, and they got worse with every day that passed, no sign of Soiree, no clues, no trail...
"Alba?"
He could hear her voice.
'Let me wake up, now.'
"Alba, stop holding so tight!"
A mirror, in which was not his reflection, not Soiree's, but one entirely different. One that was only half complete.
"Ouch! Alba, wake up!"
Sleep released him, and he let Chae Lim go. He mumbled apologies that he meant to sound sincere, but came out garbled and unfeeling, and her arms willingly wrapped around him anyway.
"You don't have to stay here with me. I don't want to ask you to do things that you don't want to... I don't want my problems on your shoulders," he told her.
"I know," she replied, holding him closer.
He opened his mouth, but was unable to say something so selfish.
'I don't want you to turn out to be something you aren't. I don't want your love and kindness to just disappear one day. I'd rather have you leave now... then leave when I may really need you.'
As much as he hated to admit it, Alba Meira didn't want to be alone, and the only one he wanted beside him now was the woman holding him and stroking his hair.
--
Author's Note: I have reached another angst thing. I know I have multi-chapter things to be finishing, but the angst just... flows. I'm probably going to write like... 14 more oneshots. Oh well.
This probably won't have a sequel. If, for some crazy reason, you did enjoy this oneshot, please go check out ALLRRPRP's 'The man of my dreams'.
And for those who were interested... 'Breaking and Entering' will not be having a sequel. It was on my mom's computer, which broke, and I'm not rewriting ten pages. It may, however, have a lemon.
As for possible discrepencies with Kyo... according to the KOF anime, which I know isn't cannon, KOFXI happened between KOFMI and KOF2k6, and KOFMI happened after KOF2k3.
Leave a review, please.