DARKSTALKERS: VAMPIRE SAVIOR
Chapter Four: Devil's World
Fanfiction by Louis the Rogue
(Based on original story by Capcom Inc.)
Treading the ground before him to its conclusion, Aulbath found himself standing atop a coral cliff overlooking an endless forest with trees of the purest, shining gold.
"A peculiar, yet marvelous world", he remarked aloud.
A sudden crashing in the forest brought his senses into sharp focus. With a series of agile leaps, he cleared the cliffside and bounded across the canopy of the forest, eyes flitting to the ground below in a lightning quick sweep, "I know that sound. Those breaths…"
Somewhere in the golden forest, a mighty white ape thrashed about with all his might, leveling trees left and right with ponderous thrusts, "Where am I!-? Where are my people!-? If somebody doesn't give me an answer, I'll make them talk!"
Springing from the cover of trees above, a keen expression on his face, the noble merman tackled his old friend, quickly subduing him with a sudden spray of violet gas from his gills.
As Quatos lagged, thrown into a brief but violent coughing fit, Aulbath waited with crossed arms for the effects to subside.
Slowly rising to his feet, Quatos turned to his attacker with a roar, but stopped short of his ally's self-assured grin and guffawed instead, "Fancy meeting you here, Scales."
"And you, Furry One", Aulbath acknowledged with a nod, "But where is here?"
"Damn good question", Quatos roared, scratching behind his ear with one of his huge fingers, "And what's with all this 'all souls as one' stuff while we're at it!"
"Obviously, the voice of our captor has spoken", Aulbath retorted with a tone of mild impatience, "And it is by this entity's design that we have arrived here. If we can locate the enigmatic 'collector of souls', we may be able to escape."
"Works for me", the simian behemoth shrugged.
Aulbath nodded decisively and started off through the forest, Quatos in tow, "Then let us make haste, my friend. With every second we waste, my Alba's chances of survival grow increasingly thin..."
As the duo disappeared behind the cover of the trees, they never detected the glint of two beady, amethyst eyes staring hungrily at them from behind a bush.
As the young woman in the burgundy dress struggled across the barren red desert, the fierce winds whipped her scarf about her face, nearly taking the breath out of her several times.
"I can feel you", she muttered into the wind, "Why so sad? Have you finally lost your battle with the darkness? Please, I… I don't want to have to do that."
Her mind was far away now, and as the wind stopped dead, she awoke to find herself standing before the Sorbonne on a memorable sunset that ended nine years ago.
On the steps, before her eyes, a pig-tailed girl in a faded blue dress stood looking up at her companion, her little round face solemn for the first time since he had returned from his epic struggle. A struggle he had fought and won just for her.
He was tall, and dark, and strong. Just the way she remembered him. He looked so sad that day; she knew why now. Seeing her pain at losing him had broken his heart.
As the man that had brought happiness back into her heart turned to leave her with nothing but the money for her education and a second chance, the words he spoke would burn themselves into her memory every day that followed, "Take heart, Anita. Your battle is over for now. But promise me this; if ever we meet again, and I have given up the fight, show me the mercy of a quick death. This last task, I may entrust to you."
And then, just as quickly as it had left, the wind picked up again, washing away the world around and leaving only the harsh desert. But now something new appeared in the wind. The rough figure of a man in a blue and white robe, his face dominated in shadow by a metallic traveling hat, stood silently before her, leaned upon a walking staff.
"Friend or foe?", Anita shouted into the darkness.
Lifting his hat just enough to see the girl before him, Oboro gripped his staff tightly with both hands, "I sense the taint within you. Do you serve The Dark?"
"I seek a man who has dedicated his life to destroying The Dark", Anita returned.
Oboro nodded gravely, "You have found one."
Bulleta snaked through the abandoned ruins of a village like a shadow in the night. She wasn't sure when the wastes had ended and the village had begun, but that didn't matter. There was only the hunt now, and her hunter's intuition told her that prey was nearby.
"You think they'll put up much of a fight, Harry?", she grinned impishly as she ducked behind a corner and cocked her revolver.
Peeking out of the picnic basket looped over her forearm, Harry tilted his head up at her and made a muffled but expressively puzzled yap.
Bulleta sighed apathetically in response, "You're probably right, but I can dream…"
At that moment, the wall beside her burst forward with the force of an explosion. Had she not nimbly dodged to the side, the girl would have been buried in the rubble.
Taking a few instinctive pot shots at the source of the blast, Bulleta pulled herself to her feet with a glare, "Whoever did that is so dead…"
"Then kill me, if you can", a low voice rumbled from inside the shadows of the building. Lumbering forward, Victor returned her glare with a stalwart grimace, "But I will not stop until Emily is whole again."
As she stumbled through the fog once more, moving by strength of will alone, Felicia started to make out shapes in the haze. Hapless and hopeless, the faded figures reminded her of the poverty-stricken neighborhood where she had grown up.
It occurred to her, as she briefly studied the area, that these were the same cracked buildings as back then. Even the air smelled the same. She was home.
"Rose?", she mewed to nowhere, moving forward with a sudden vigor "Are you here again too? Rose, I'm coming home… Don't you worry, I'm coming home…"
"Home", a little voice called her to her senses, her heart wrenching as she listened to it sobbing in the darkness.
Peering into a corner, Felicia caught sight of a lavender-haired little girl in a red corset sitting amongst the garbage.
The girl looked up at her pitifully with those big, red eyes of hers, "I want to go home."
"Wa's all this!-?", Zabel fumed as he pushed his way through a sea of wooden doll parts hanging from the ceiling of the disturbingly dim-lit place he had found himself.
As he clung to his volatile companion's leg, Le Marta studied the room around. He recognized this place, and that realization brought a shiver down his spine.
An image of Ozomu suddenly flashing in his mind, Zabel looked down at Marta with a sadistic grin, "Y'think? I hope so! He's so dead when I find 'im…"
"These dolls", he wondered aloud, "Why-for do they smell so familiar…?"
"You haven't forgotten me, have you Zabel?", a voice called menacingly from seemingly everywhere, putting the ghoul assassin instantly on guard. He tried his best not to show it, but the voice in the shadows had struck a nerve.
"Mary?", he quivered in spite of himself, "That you love?"
"What a smart boy!", the voice snapped, the disembodied limbs around Zabel springing to life and leaping from their wires to converge into the shape of his erstwhile mentor. Only now her once-distinguished voice echoed with the filter of another, more masculine tone, and her eyes were as black as two voids.
It was her expression, however, that unnerved him the most. No longer the collected, coldly sadistic face he had grown to respect and fear, Marionette's expression was dominated by the frenzied smile of a zealot.
"Die Zabel!", she screamed, raising a bloody knife from her side, "Die for the New Makai!"
