Disclaimer: I don't own Street Fighter in any way, shape or form. It and all associated characters, trademarks, etc. are owned by Capcom. I'm just telling some stories about them.


Chapter Two: Interloper

Great Britain, March 12

For a long moment all was silence, save for the ragged breathing of the Interpol officer Vega had been about to skewer. Sweat was running freely down the injured man's face, as his terrified eyes shifted from the masked assassin to the young policewoman, and back again. He knew full well how powerless he was. The confrontation playing out before him might well result in his death, but he was unable to influence its outcome in any way. The only thing he could do was remain motionless, and pray harder than he had ever prayed before.

Slowly, calmly, the Chinese woman began to walk down the alley toward them. Her steps were measured and graceful, yet even in that gently flowing gait Vega could detect power and precision lurking just beneath the surface. When she halted, it was just a few feet short of the claw that was pointed at her chest. When she spoke, it was in a quiet voice that carried an unmistakable threat in it. "Let him go. Now."

Vega glanced down at the Interpol officer at his feet, aware of the man's existence for the first time since the girl had appeared. On any other night it would have galled him to leave someone alive whose life he could have taken, but this occasion was different. His attention was consumed by this newcomer, and the officer had become nothing more than an annoying distraction.

He considered removing the pest with a swift kill, but found that idea was repulsive to him. How could he sully himself with the blood of a maggot on a night when there were angels to be slain? It would be like sleeping with a cheap harlot just before going to meet his true love. No, he would keep his claw chaste, remaining faithful to his prey for as long as she lived.

Reaching down with his left hand, he grabbed the injured man and dragged him to his feet. "Get out of my sight..." he hissed, shoving the man down the alley toward the policewoman. The man stumbled away, almost collapsing, until the Chinese woman caught him by the shoulder and managed to steady him.

"Go back to headquarters," she told him, giving his shoulder a reassuring pat. "Let them know what's happened. Have Captain Walker prepare reinforcements, but tell him not to send them in until you hear from me."

"But Chun-li, this guy—"

Chun-li shook her head, cutting the man off. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. This won't be the first time I've tangled with one of Bison's lackeys." Vega smiled at that. Such confidence. But at least his flower now had a name. Chun-li.

Despite her assurances, the officer still looked stricken at abandoning the young woman to face the monster that had taken out his entire team. But he nodded and began limping out of the alley, glancing back over his shoulder repeatedly as he did so. Vega waited until the man had disappeared from sight, then sighed a small sigh of relief. That was always the way of things; the imperfections were swept away, leaving the stage to the perfect.

Slowly, the policewoman slid into a fighting stance, watching her opponent intently. "I'd offer you the chance to surrender," she said. "But I think you've already demonstrated what your reply would be."

The killer laughed. "I could make a similar offer," he said, licking his lips. "You need not resist. I could make it very enjoyable for both of us, at least up until the end."

"Sorry," came her reply. "Your kind of enjoyment doesn't appeal to me."

"Yes, that's what they all think, at first..." Vega admitted, eyes searching for an opening in the woman's guard as he spoke. "But I always win them over sooner or later. There was one girl I kidnapped in Portugal... Now she was a stubborn one. It took me six days before I could get her to—"

Vega's world exploded in a flash of white. Something struck the side of his head with incredible force, flinging him across the alley into the nearby wall. Brilliant colors swam across his vision, blinding him as he backpedaled away. He swung his claw in a series of wild defensive slashes, while with his other hand he clutched desperately for his mask. An immense wash of relief swept over him as he felt it, still firmly attached where it should be, protecting his perfect visage.

Slowly the afterimages faded away, revealing the girl standing in the same place she had been before. Her leg was now cocked, knee pointed directly at Vega. And her face, calm and peaceful moments before, bore an expression of fury. The assassin eyes were wide, his mind unable to process what had just happened. She just... kicked me, he realized. She kicked me! But... I didn't even see her move!

For the first time that night, Vega's arrogance began to show signs of eroding. But, with an effort, he forced such considerations out of his mind. No! he thought. She was lucky, nothing more! I was distracted by her beauty and by a pleasant memory. She isn't... She can't be better than I am. No woman is better than I am!

Chun-li slowly lowered her leg to the ground, bringing her anger under control as she did so. Vega's response was to lunge forward, angling his claw in an upward slash that should have gutted the policewoman. But she lunged in as well, parrying his claw arm before it could reach its target and grabbing hold of it. Continuing with her forward motion, she spun past the charging assassin and twisted to slam her elbow into the base of his neck.

The impact sent Vega flying, but he had not flown more than a few inches before Chun-li's hand latched onto his long, braided ponytail, yanking him backward as she drove her knee into the rear of his ribcage. Vega howled as his head snapped back, the pull on his hair and the strike to his back twisting his body in opposing directions.

But the Chinese woman underestimated the assassin's ability to function through pain. No sooner had the knee slammed into his back than his left hand was already snaking up behind him. It came up under Chun-li's raised leg, trapping it—and her—in place. Then it was his claw hand's turn to strike. He twisted his arm, stabbing the blades behind him in a vicious thrust. A short cry of pain from his adversary was his reward, but he had no way of knowing how badly he had hurt her.

He pulled his claw back for a second attempt, but as he did so the girl struck him hard in the spine with two simultaneous open handed strikes, loosening his grip enough that she was able to tear her leg free. Immediately he whirled around with a wide slash, but it missed as Chun-li ducked under it, then shot back to her feet with a spin kick of her own.

Vega jumped back, the policewoman's foot missing him by mere inches. Then he had to parry desperately as she followed that up with a blindingly fast series of kicks. She was on the offensive now, her feet blurring as they mercilessly battered the masked assassin. Fake high, strike low, then high, then high again. Left leg, left leg, right leg, left leg. Power. Precision. And speed, speed, speed!

Vega's whole body was throbbing in pain, his breath coming in gasps and pants. Now he could see where his claw had caught his foe earlier, and it brought him little satisfaction. Blood was indeed seeping from three parallel cuts in her side, but she had been able to twist her body out of the way so that the stab had only sliced her in passing instead of impaling her. And though injured, she was still coming after him with a terrifying ferocity. He tried to counterattack, making a few desperate slashes at her legs as she kicked, but she avoided them with ease.

The killer continued to give ground. Far more distressing than the physical pain to him was the complete upheaval of his world, the violation of his most trusted beliefs about the natural order of things. This was a girl he was fighting! A girl! A member of the weaker sex! She should have been screaming and begging for mercy by now, but instead she was outclassing him at every turn, and there wasn't anything he could do about it!

It was beyond his comprehension, yet simultaneously undeniable. With every attack he blocked, with every attack he failed to block, he felt himself drawing nearer and nearer to total collapse. Somehow, the woman managed to keep up the vicious assault while still staying well clear of his claw. He had long since stopped trying to attack her, and instead devoted all his remaining strength and ability to simply shielding himself from the onslaught. But it was a loosing battle. He was all but beaten, and Chun-li showed no signs of slowing down.

It was then, as he feverishly searched for something that he could do, that Vega heard the sound.

It was soft, at first, enough so that neither combatant consciously noticed it. But it did not remain so. Slowly and steadily the volume built, growing louder by the second. Soon it was plainly audible, then nearly deafening. It was the sound of helicopter blades, chopping their circular path through the night air.

Both he and Chun-li paused in their fight, looking upward together just as a sleek black helicopter soared over their heads. It made a tight half-circle around the roof of the abandoned hotel, the pickup point that Vega's master had specified. And with its arrival a choice was forced upon Vega, one that tore at his very soul.

The killer's mouth went dry and his stomach clenched. How could he flee the battle now? It was against everything he believed in—against every fiber of his being!—to admit that this female was his better. Regardless of the danger, regardless of his master's orders, regardless of anything in all creation, the overwhelming compulsion of his twisted psyche was to stay and fight. It was beyond desire. He felt a need, a burning, consuming need to give this woman the bloody death she deserved for even thinking she could stand against a warrior so perfect as him!

But there exist other needs in humanity as well, and for Vega some of them ran even deeper than his lust, his cruelty or his ego. One such need was clawing its way to the surface now, perhaps the deepest and darkest of them all: the need to survive. In that heart-rending moment, the man who had kept such close company with death, visiting it on so many helpless victims, realized that he was afraid to die. And death was surely what awaited him if he failed his mission.

In that moment Vega abandoned his pride, along with all hopes of defeating this Interpol witch. With a strangled sob, he spun away from his opponent. And for the first time in his life, he ran like the coward he had always been.

The masked assassin plowed his shoulder into the nearby side door without breaking stride, bursting through it and into the hotel. He could hear that accursed policewoman coming up fast behind him, and he poured on every last ounce of strength and speed he possessed in his desperate attempt to keep ahead of her. Vega sprinted across the lobby, remembering just in time that the stairs between the first and second floors had been destroyed in his earlier battle. Instead, Vega jumped for the hole in the ceiling, the one he had made when he had thrown the Interpol officer down through it as a diversion.

His hands latched onto the upper edges of the opening, pulling him up through it. Immediately he ran for the stairs, glancing back over his shoulder as he did so. Naturally, he expected to see his relentless pursuer following him up through the hole behind him at any moment.

He was wrong.

"Tenshokyaku!"

The floor immediately in front of Vega exploded as Chun-li shot up through it like a human rocket. Her feet were flashing in a blinding array of kicks, which would have beaten her opponent senseless had he not managed to dive sideways at the last instant. As it was she missed him by mere inches, as he twisted away into a roll that carried him past her and over to the stairway door.

Vega uncoiled from his improvised somersault into a leap that carried him over to the stairs leading to the third floor. He raced up them, taking them two and three at a time. Third floor, fourth floor. He could hear footsteps on the stairs beneath him. Fifth floor, sixth floor. The stairs dead-ended, but he could see a trap door in the ceiling that was undoubtedly the roof access. Almost there!

Without pausing Vega jumped toward the trap door, shredding the wood with one slash of his claw and swinging himself up through it with the other hand. When he emerged, he found himself on the flat roof of the hotel. The assassin gasped in relief. There was the helicopter, hanging ready in midair, his escape from the awful events of the night. Everything was going to be all right.

Already he was thinking of ways in which he could rationalize his inexplicable failure. It wasn't that he had been afraid to fight that girl. No, of course not. He had merely realized that if he had fought her then, he would not have had time to give the attention to her death that her beauty deserved. Yes! Yes, that was it. It had been out of consideration for her. Vega smiled widely. Yes... In fact, she ought to be honored by his noble gesture!

The sound of Chun-li's footsteps drawing nearer shook him out of his reverie. He dashed for the helicopter as it hovered on the far side of the roof from him, hope strengthening his legs for the final sprint. Almost there, almost there... He heard the policewoman leaping up onto the roof, but by then he was only feet away from the helicopter. Covering the remaining distance, he grabbed onto the hovering vehicle's landing gear and pulled himself up to its open door. "Go!" he screamed in at the pilot.

Obediently, the machine jerked into motion, flying out over the street. As it pulled away from the hotel, Vega turned back for one last parting look at Chun-li. He saw her standing there, on the edge of the roof, looking out at the departing helicopter with an unreadable expression on her face. Vega relaxed. He complimented himself on foiling her plans, imagining how she would go to bed that night cursing his name. He did not notice the peculiar way in which she was cupping her hands, nor the look of intense concentration that formed on her face...

"Kikkoken!"

Vega's eyes went wide as a blast of pure, blazing energy shot out from her palms and hurtled toward the escaping helicopter. Time seemed to freeze in that moment of helplessness, of knowing what was coming but being utterly powerless to avert it. There was only one chance, one slender chance that he had.

Just before Chun-li's fireball struck the helicopter, Vega flung himself out into space. An instant later, the Kikkoken slammed into the machine's rear fuselage with a blast that tore the vehicle almost in half and detonated the fuel tanks it carried. Vega felt the searing heat from the explosion wash over him, then howled as his back was pierced by innumerable pieces of flying shrapnel. The wind whistled around him as he fell, arms flailing, watching the street below grow closer and closer and closer...


Chun-li ran down the stairs that she had so recently been running up. Now that the immediacy of the situation had lessened, she was beginning to feel pain in her side from where Vega's claw had caught her. She clutched her wound as she ran, but knew that she could not afford to let up her pace. If Vega escaped...

If it had been any normal human who had taken the six-story fall, Chun-li wouldn't have been nearly so worried, but she refused to let herself underestimate the Spanish ninja's powers. What would be certain death for a weaker person was not necessarily so for him, and in any case she was not about to take chances on matters of such importance. This was the single biggest break in the Shadowlaw investigation yet, and she would not allow it to fall apart now.

She sped down the stairs, then when the stairs ended, jumped over to the second floor and lowered herself down through the hole her Kazan Tenshokyaku had made. Then she dashed out into the street, senses tuned for any sign of the masked killer.

He was gone.

He wasn't in the place where she had seen his body land, nor was he anywhere near it. The street looked deserted and empty, with not a soul to be seen. Slowly she began to walk down the street, gazing into every shadow, listening to every sound. The night breeze blew through her hair, playing with her bangs as it swirled around her face.

Her muscles were tense, expecting at any moment to see her enemy leaping out at her, claw slashing. She wished fervently that she had someone to watch her back, but at this point her only option was to stay alert and pray that she could spot Vega before he could sneak up behind her...

"Over here."

Chun-li whirled at the words, spoken in a raspy whisper. It was coming from one of the other side alleys, dark and shadow-filled. She took a few steps closer, and was able to discern the vague outline of a person lying there in the darkness.

It was Vega. The nearer she drew to him, the more details she could make out. He was slouched against the alley wall, neither the shadows nor his mask able to disguise how much pain he was in. Looking down at what she could see of his legs, Chun-li guessed that at least one, and probably both of them were broken. Evidently he had dragged himself into this hiding place after he had landed, but for some reason had now chosen to reveal himself.

She looked down at the lunatic's shattered body, her gaze not altogether without pity, and spoke. "Vega, I'm placing you under arrest for-"

"Please, spare me the formalities..." Vega whispered, coughing. "There's no need for it. Not for me. Not this time."

Chun-li frowned. "Your injuries aren't that bad."

Vega managed a chuckle at that. "It isn't my injuries that concern me, my little flower. I've failed my master. Surely you know what that means."

"You're going to be in Interpol custody, Vega. He won't be able to touch you there."

"Won't he?" Beneath his mask, Vega raised an eyebrow. "My beauty, you have yet to learn the full scope of what my master is capable of. Whereas I..." Vega broke into another fit of coughing before continuing. "I know full well the power he has. And if that were not enough, I know the power he stands poised to gain. Soon, there will be no place in the world safe from him."

A chill crept up Chun-li's spine at those words, but she ignored it. Instead, she spoke. "Is that what this tape you bought is about?"

"Oh, but that would be telling..." Vega lifted one of his fingers and moved it from side to side in a weak scolding motion. "Not very honorable to stab one's master in the back like that, wouldn't you agree? A conscientious man like myself could never do such a thing. Now if only you could see the tape for yourself, that might give you some insight. But unfortunately, you're too late."

"What?" Vega's statement hit Chun-li square in the chest. "What do you mean?"

"Someone has beaten you to the prize," replied the assassin. "I no longer possess what you seek. You took too long coming down those stairs, my little flower..."

"Who took it?" demanded Chun-li angrily. "Someone from Shadowlaw?"

"Hardly..." answered Vega. "Think logically now, my dear. If I had succeeded in getting the tape to my master's hands, then I would not have failed him. If I had succeeded in getting the tape to my master's hands..." —as he spoke, the killer began to painfully raise his claw— "...I would not be forced to do... this!"

Chun-li lunged toward him, trying to stop the maniac. She was too late; the claw slashed downward, finding its final resting place in the body of its master.

Vega's eyes blinked rapidly, his consciousness fading fast. But even through the pain and the loss of blood, he managed to lift his other hand up to the back his head. Slowly and clumsily he struggled to undo the bindings on his mask, succeeding after a prolonged effort. The mask tumbled down off of his face, clattering onto the cement beneath him. "I... forgot... to ask you..." he choked out, barely intelligible. "The mask's... protection... is not perfect... My face... The fall... Is it... all right?" The killer looked up at Chun-li, who looked back with eyes that showed no sign of what was going on behind them.

She was looking at a man whose career she had become intimately familiar with. She knew, perhaps better than anyone else, the full extent of the misery he had caused to countless victims and their families. She had longed for the chance to bring him to justice, and now he lay there, seconds away from death and the ultimate justice that lay beyond it.

And at the same time, she saw him for who he was. A twisted, shallow wreck of a man, his body at last mirroring the condition that his soul had been in for many long years. He was a wretched, dying ruin, his mind consumed and destroyed by the very vices that he was so enamored of. She had expected to feel anger in this situation, but as she looked down on him, the only emotions that she could muster up were pity and disgust.

"P-please..." gasped Vega, eyes loosing their focus. "Tell... me... My face..."

In the shadows where the killer lay, Chun-li could only see vague outlines of shapes, no fine details. She had no way of knowing the condition of Vega's face, and in a sense, it was irrelevant. She had to make a decision, and she couldn't debate it any longer.

"Your face is fine," she told him quietly. "It wasn't injured."

Vega let out a sigh, an unseen smile crossing his face. "Perfect... to the very end..." he said. Then he relaxed as death claimed him.

Chun-li simply stood there for a moment, before going down on one knee and searching the dead man's body. She rifled through every pocket she could find, then glanced at the surrounding area to see if he might have thrown the tape away from him. Her search was fruitless; even if the tape was somewhere in the shadows, it was too dark to spot it. And, while she and her Interpol colleagues would certainly take the entire vicinity apart in their search for the tape, she knew deep in her gut that Vega had been telling the truth. Someone else had the tape now. Not Interpol, nor Shadowlaw, but rather some unknown interloper.

The policewoman sighed tiredly, the pain in her side beginning to make its presence felt again. What did it all mean? Who on earth had taken the tape, and what was so important about it that everyone wanted it so badly? Too many questions, and with the disappearance of her only lead, no prospect of answers anytime soon.

She was about to stand and go when she noticed something she had missed in her cursory inspection moments earlier. There was something lying on the ground. It was paper-like, pure white, yet all but impossible to see in the darkness. Even from her kneeling position, Chun-li could barely make it out. It lay at Vega's feet, as though it had been dropped there. She reached out and took it, carrying it out of the shadows and into the relative brilliance of the streetlamp. It was then that she was able to make out what she was holding.

It was a tarot card. The card of Judgment.


Hours later, Antonio sat miserably in the private cell he had been placed in, wondering how things could have gone so wrong. All the lights had been turned off, bathing his surroundings in total darkness. Supposedly this was to allow him to sleep, but he knew he would get none of that tonight. He sat hunched over on the edge of his bunk, wringing his hands in fear.

Already, the events that had taken place earlier that night seemed like a lifetime ago. He had not made it more than three blocks from the old hotel before a pair of men dressed all in black had stopped him at gunpoint, telling him he was under arrest. They had listed an impressive array of offenses that he was charged with, all of them couched in legal double-speak, but the basic gist had been that he was an errand boy for one of the most brutal criminal organizations on the planet. And with that he had ended up here, sitting in this cell, waiting for them to do whatever it was they were going to do with him.

The dark seemed to crowd in around him. His mind knew that he was surrounded by cement walls on three sides, and the bars of the cell on the remaining one, but in the utter lack of light his imagination began to play cruel games. He knew his surroundings were real, but he could not feel it. To him it seemed as though he were lost in a dark void of nothingness, a vacuum with no borders, no boundaries, nothing and no one except himself. His hands began to shake, wondering how long he would have to endure this until the morning came. Time seemed to lose all meaning in that silent, lightless world.

Overwhelmed by his worries and self-recriminations for ever taking this job, he almost didn't hear the soft whisper of sound from the center of the cell. It was like the sound of a breeze, a tiny swishing noise, fading away into nothingness almost before it began. It was so minor, so inconsequential, and yet it changed something. There was something different now, something in the atmosphere of the room that seemed tainted, poisoned.

It was then that memories began to flood back into Antonio's mind, old memories of horror stories, read under the covers at night or told around a campfire. He felt the childhood fears rising in him, fears of the ghosts, the boogeymen, the monsters waiting and lurking in the shadows... You knew that if you dared to venture away from the fire, if you went out into the darkness, then "they" would get you.

Except that this time there was no fire, no island of safety. It was just him, alone and defenseless against all the terrors that his mind could conjure up for him. He took a deep breath and held it, trying to convince himself that this was nothing but a result of his strained nerves—

—and then he froze. He froze in horror, every muscle in his body clenching with unbearable tightness. His heart seemed to stop in his chest, and his mouth opened in a silent scream. Because, even when he had been holding the breath in, he could still hear the quiet sound of breathing in the cell. Breathing that was not his own.

He could hear it even now: in and out, in and out. There was something in there with him. What it was, he did not know. How it had gotten there, he could not guess. But he knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that whatever it was, it had come for him.

"So you are Antonio," a deep voice boomed in the darkness.

Now Antonio did try to scream. He tried to force air through his paralyzed vocal cords, tried to cry for help, tried to do something. But before he could he felt an iron hand slam into his throat, grabbing him by it and lifting him bodily off of his bunk. The scream was trapped, coming out only as a strangled wheeze.

"Very unprofessional of you to allow yourself to be caught like this," the voice continued. "I am most disappointed in you, especially after the glowing assurances you gave my organization about your ability."

"You're... from Shadowlaw?" the information broker managed to gasp, his legs twisting and flailing in the empty air beneath him.

The voice laughed. "I am Shadowlaw, you pathetic worm. Tonight's unbelievable catastrophe has forced me to take a personal hand in this situation, something that I truly despise having to do."

"What... do you want from me?" Antonio choked out. "I already... gave you the tape!"

"Perhaps," agreed the voice. "But now it has passed out of my possession. Nevertheless, I need the information it holds, and I will obtain it."

"But I can't give it to you!" was Antonio's pleading reply. "The one I gave you was the master copy, the only copy! That... that was one of the conditions of our deal!" He gasped desperately for more air than the fraction that was making it into his lungs. "Please... you have to believe me, there aren't any other copies!"

"No..." the voice rumbled. "That is not quite true. One other copy does exist."

"Wh... what? Another copy?"

"Yes. You yourself would have to have watched this tape, to see if it was in fact what you were hired to find. Am I correct?"

Antonio said nothing, but the look in his eyes was answer enough. The voice continued. "That means the information still exists inside your mind. And, imperfect container though that is, it is the only one available to me."

"My... mind?" Antonio managed to say. "I... I'll tell you anything I can remember, anything at all, but..."

"Not good enough," said the voice, and as it did so, the darkness was broken by two points of weird purple light. Antonio stared at them in horrified fascination as their glow increased, until he at last understood what they were. They were a pair of eyes, burning with an unearthly radiance, staring right into his soul.

Antonio arched his back in agony, the hand around his throat tightening to cut off his cries and pleas. The pain was unimaginable, as his thoughts were torn from his consciousness by a force unlike any he could have imagined. His limbs thrashed wildly, trying to escape the liquid fire that was shooting through every nerve in his body. It felt like a trillion serrated knives, gouging and tearing away at his mind all at once. He could not speak, could not fight back, could not escape, could not do anything but sob in his own thoughts: Make it stop! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!

And then the torture ended. "Interesting..." mused the voice. "Very interesting..."

Antonio could do nothing except shudder and convulse in the aftereffects of the experience. Slowly and gradually, coherent thought began to return, until he could begin to speak again. "Please..." he whispered, barely audible. "No more... Please..."

"No, that won't be necessary," the voice agreed. "I have already learned everything I need to know from you." At these words, Antonio sagged in relief. Maybe now it would finally be over.

"However..." the voice went on. "There remains the problem of your imprisonment here. If Interpol is able to pry this same information out of you, it could complicate my plans severely. I cannot take the chance on allowing you to remain in their custody."

The information broker shook his head dazedly from side, trying to clear it. "You mean... you're going to help me escape from here?" he asked, hopefully.

The voice laughed. "In a manner of speaking."


The terrible scream echoed throughout the cell block and beyond, chilling everyone who heard it to the bone. Immediately, there was a massive stampede as all the guards on duty converged on that spot. It only took them moments to discover that the inhuman noise had come from the cell of the man they had just brought in earlier that night.

Soon the lights in the cell block were on, guards running down the hallway past other cells, ignoring the demands of other prisoners to know what was going on. In the space of a few seconds, they arrived at Antonio's cell.

The door was still shut and locked, just as it had been ever since they first put their prisoner behind it. There were no signs of a forced entry anywhere, no place that anyone could have gone in or out by.

And yet the cell was empty. Empty, except for the bunk that hung from one wall, the sink that was positioned by another, and the charred human skeleton which lay sprawled out on the floor.