Blindfolded By Memories
----------------------------
Namiya Squeals: Ain't writer's block grand? 3 months. THREE GODDAMN MONTHS. You know what, it's not even funny. A story I once fancied so much has turned into a goddamn epic. And who wants that? And while work has been good overall(one of my novels is getting picked up, and I'm once again touring as a hired gun for a rock band), this story's been 2 years in the making.
And it already turned out to be longer than I thought. It's like jumping the shark, except I have nothing to boast about(regarding my attempts as a fic writer). Luckily enough, no more suggestion are being taken. So shut up, sit your fanny down and enjoy the rest of this ride. Reviews are accepted. Suggestions towards story plot will be ignored. Any and all matters in regards of my spelling are welcome.
All drama aside...
----------------------------Chapter 20: "Unfit to Obsolescence"
A few blocks away from Gorin High School.
"Well..." Chun-Li expressed, while re-doing part of her hairdo. "...Ryu suggested this would be a bit difficult"
"Ch-choto matte-- Ryu-san?" Ayuhara Natsu asked, sounding a bit confused. "He devised this whole plan on his own?"
"Well, yes" Chun-Li said with a small smile on her face.
"Na-chan, I think Sakura's 'little' crush had more to it, don't you think?" Hinata said, while using Natsu's shoulder to prop herself higher.
Both girls quickly took notice on how Chun-Li looked away.
"Chun-Li, are you ok?" Natsu said a bit concerned.
"Uh, yeah. Nothing to it. Let's just go" Chun-Li stated, with her expression diverging rather drastically from her usual self. She walked off any further conversation, with both Fei-Long and Guy following shortly after.
"That was uncalled for, Hina" Natsu's savvy grip of the situation was well noted just by looking at Chun-Li's expression.
"What do you mean...?" While Hinata pondered a bit listlessly for brief seconds...
Then—
"Oh, snap! She's the--!"
"Finally all those mystery novels sink in" Natsu dully said. And while the two friends discussed of Chun-Li, Sakura and such...
"Hey... where's Sawamura?" Batsu asked.
"Huh? Shoma?" Robert responded. "Oh god, where is he now?" He added, while lowering his visor.
"HEY!" A loud scream was heard from a distance.
"Augh, darn... it never ends" Roberto lamented in a rather grim fashion. Natsu hid her face in embarrassment.
"What's wrong?" Guy began to wonder.
"Seems Shoma decided to go ahead and--" Before Natsu could say anything else…
"SCREW YOU, NUMB-NUTS!" Sawamura Shoma's shout was enough for everyone in a 2-mile ratio to listen to.
"You know what? Never mind..."
'Memo to self: Next time, regardless of how quiet he is, tag along with Ryu.' Guy thought while rolling his eyes and heading towards the source of the soon-to-be quarrel. Soon the others followed. While in there, both Chun-Li and Guy recognized a familiar face.
'Is he...?' Xiang knew that she had seen this person before. 'What was his name…? Damn, I can't remember' She added.
"Aw, shoot" With Hinato, though, it was a whole different deal. His disapproving grimace denoted this.
"Look, as much as I'd like to kick your rear end, I'm in something of a hurry, so..." The person standing a few feet away from Shoma spoke. He sounded collected.
"You shut your mouth, dammit!" Shoma cut right through his current rival's dialogue.
"O-Kay... really, I don't have much time. I'm looking for someone, so would you be kind enough to get off the way?" The person remained calm.
"Off THIS!" Without further necessity for a trigger, Shoma swung his huge bat towards the unfortunate one.
FWOOSH!
A strong air was heard, but nothing else.
"Shoma…!" Natsu felt obliged. "Please stop!" She added, sounding quite desperate.
"Seems you are a bit hot-headed..." The contender said, while taking the dirt off his left shoulder. "...Well, not that I am without such flaws at times. I apologize for calling you a twerp..."
"Petty words!" Shoma claimed, while using his bat to taunt his rival. "And other thing..." Before the short-tempered Gorin student could continue...
"Kusanagi-san? What the hell are you doing here?" Guy interrupted the baseball enthusiast. Shoma's ill-directed determination suddenly veered into blank confusion.
"Kusanagi?" Chun-Li uttered. "You mean the guy who--"
Kyo cleared his throat rather loudly; in an obvious attempt to dismiss what he feared was going to come out of Chun-Li's mouth.
"Never mind" Chun-Li said, with both a tone of dark contempt and an evil leer to match.
"Well, taking advantage that Hinato is here and all, I would prefer if he introdu--"
"Oh, wait! I know you! I know you!" Hinata interrupted Kyo's sentence quite unsoundly. Kyo's cool was lost after he smacked his right hand against his forehead.
"You're the guy who went asking for clues in our school" Wakaba Hinata remarked, while pointing repeatedly towards Kyo, who slowly rolled his eyes, attempting to shrug this whole skit like something non-existent.
"Wait... what?" Immediately after hearing that compelling argument, Guy bit his lip and concealed his eyes with his hand. 'This is life in a nutshell…' He thought, with his lip-biting grimace sticking further on.
Then, Kyo suddenly allowed a cunning smile to surface.
"Kyo. Kusanagi Kyo. Tamagawa Minami. Third year student" After a rather humble introduction, Kyo paused for a bit to clear his throat, this time on a more serious manner.
"After the attacks on both Gedo and Gorin went off, the Student's Council on our school decided to form his own team to investigate... both my original partner and I intended to have another third year student in the team, but since Kasugano Sakura, once a strong prospect for both Taiyo and Gorin was between the first-year students in Tamagawa, the Council asked us to meet and, if possible, recruit her"
After Kyo's explanation, many a perplexed looks were directed on him.
"Wow... that was actually pretty useful" Shoma claimed in a bit of awe.
"So now you're siding with him, Shoma?" Natsu's tone was playful…
"Screw you, Natsu!" but this passed unnoticed to the short-tempered baseball player.
"God, not again" Roberto said, while listening to the same argument he was awfully getting so used to.
"You've had it pretty hard, Roberto-san" Hinata tried to comfort Roberto, while he took both hands to the sides of his head, in obvious despair.
"It's not fair..." He lamented again.
"I swear. People are getting crazier by the minute" Batsu observed.
"Your voicing may not be too far off, friend. But truth be told, who we are to judge someone else's actions, Batsu?" Kyosuke decided to remain neutral.
"Point taken" Batsu seemed to comply.
"Great. Has the tea party reached its climax?" Kyo said, using a clearly biting tone. "Or should we, you know... get going to Justice instead and oh, I don't know, maybe-- END THIS GODDAMN IDIOCY ONCE AND FOR ALL?" He added, with an augmented volume.
He took a rather deep breath afterwards. Most of the other students, included both Natsu and Shoma, stared at him with a combination of fear, bemusement and doubt.
"You're right... we should be on our way" Hinato Guy, the only one who remained calm, responded quite soundly.
"... Right. Ryu said we should meet there before anything else occurs" Chun-Li seconded.
"Yeah. I'll guess we shouldn't be doing silly things" Natsu complied, while reaching for the back of her head.
"Fair. Let's get going" Shoma said, finally showing a different take of himself.
Kyo allowed an annoyed grunt out of his mouth after hearing such feedback. "Oh, glad we got that out of the way" He said in an almost nonchalant manner, while starting to walk.
"Sure, no--" Before continuing, the baseball enthusiast stopped for a moment to ponder on the true meaning of Kyo's sentence. It finally hit Shoma "WAIT! Were you trying to be snide?"
"Ugh, never mind..." Natsu didn't pulled any punches when it came to present her annoyance towards Shoma's almost meathead nature.
"But--!"
"Seriously! GONE!"
----------------------------
Some place else.
While mixing themselves with a group of businessmen, a particular trio seemed intent on evading a direct confrontation.
"Well, I'll be damned. Meidaimae...?" Iory interrupted his speech, to catch a bit of breath, and wipe sweat of his forehead. "We're half-way out of Setagaya, and he's still coming strong? That's just messed up!"
"Hey! That's my brother you're talking about!" Akira quickly retorted on behalf of her older sibling.
"Gee, excuse me..." Iory said, while rolling his eyes "...But when you come up with a better term to describe a humongous dude trying to bludgeon the shit out of us, then we'll talk" He added, with his notoriously sharpened tone.
"You know, for all your so-called lyrical awkwardness, your manner of speech becomes incredibly inventive when it comes to insult, Yagami" Ryu's point of view was delivered in his often-deadpan manner.
"Low blow, Hoshi! Low blow" Iory's smart-ass tone was almost as evident as Ryu's past observation.
"... If you say so" Ryu said while rolling his eyes. While doing so, he noticed something in particular. "Returning to our matter at hands, we should take advantage of the fact that we're in Keio. Not that I think Daigo would go out for citizens, but I guess we should avoid any public altercation"
A silence of few seconds proceeded before…
"What. the. HELL? Are you saying we should keep on running?" Iory scoffed after his one-sided questions.
"Bear with me, Yagami. Daigo is an incredibly gifted fighter, and you probably know that already"
"No kidding" Iory could almost predict what was coming.
"And besides... we still need to get 'there' by any means and, of course, as soon as possible" Ryu illustrated.
Iory gritted his teeth. Although he wanted to get back and fight against Daigo, he knew that Ryu was right.
"L' Merde" Iory cursed while reaching for his wallet.
"Arigato gozaimasu, Yagami-senpai" Akira bowed slightly while thanking Iory.
"Please avoid doing that, okay?" Iory uttered annoyed. "Let's just go"
While getting their respective passes and the few moments after their finally got into one of the trains, Akira and Iory were lucky enough to get a seat. Ryu attempted to make his way through the crowded train, but he wasn't very successful so far. Then--
"So... I-- well I know this may be awkward and all but... what exactly happened with your brother?" Iory used a rather slow pace for his question.
"I wish I knew, Yagami-senpai! Believe me. I am not even sure if it is related to this whole Justice Academy thing..."
"I assure you. It is" Iory claimed, while adjusting the strap of his left boot. "As a matter of fact, before engaging in battle against your older brother, I fought with a group of students... they were all clad in the typical Justice dressing code" He added, while finishing with the minor detail on his shoe-ware.
"So that's why you were a bit drained when we found you facing my brother?"
"Hn! Those guys didn't even put up a dece--"
"Hey, young one, are you okay?" That single phrase cut Iory off from all his momentum. Following that, a bunch of whisper and gossip took place.
"What the--?" It obviously caused him to feel a bit upset, so he went up to see the cause of such a hubbub. Akira, who was still concealing her identity from Iory, followed shortly.
They were both in awe when they took a glance.
"G'... hkkk!" Ryu was twisting on the ground, in what it seemed like severe pain.
"Ryu-kun!"
"Hoshi!" The red-haired musician pushed his way through right after realizing Ryu's apparent relapse. "Get off the way, you morons!" He added, with a notoriously aggressive tone.
Although face down, when both Akira and Iory got to where Ryu was laying down, they quickly noticed how Ryu held both his arms against his chest.
"Ryu-kun, what's wrong? Tell us please!" Akira was the first to speak to him. Ryu looked towards his companions.
"G..." Before writhing in pain once again. "Darn it. Just--" It took Ryu a notorious effort to speak clearly. After a few seconds, Ryu finally removed his left arm off his chest.
"Yagami-san..."
"What is it, man?"
"H-help me up" Hoshi extended his hand. Iory wasted no time.
A few moments later, Ryu traded places with Iory seat-wise. Everyone else returned to minding his or her own business.
"What happened to you back there, Hoshi?"
Ryu looked aside, disregarding Iory's question completely.
"Answer me, man! That pain paralyzed you, right?" Iory grabbed Ryu by the shoulders while asking about his condition.
"Godammit..." To no avail. Ryu held his head down.
"And to think I actually deemed you worthy as a band-mate" The crimson haired musician sounded disappointed.
Then, the train stopped abruptly.
"It's a similar situation to the one you go through..." The auburn haired student finally came clean. "... but, unlike yours, there's no known redemption" He added, while still holding his head down.
Iory's visible eye suddenly opened wide, showing his complete surprise at that last word he just happened to hear.
"R-redemption...?" His un-sureness was noticeable to miles.
"Atonement sounds more fitting... but it is indeed possible" While people walked in and out from the train, Ryu finally managed to stand up from his seat on his own. Although by now closed, he was already heading towards the door, with both Iory and Akira shortly following.
When they finally managed to get in front of the door, the train had already resumed on its route.
"Contrary to popular belief from the 3 houses, Orochi's best interests do not lie in the conquer, nor the destruction of this world..." Ryu said, while reaching for the pocket of his blue blazer. "But, as a rather shocking fact, in the enhancement of the very human race. Humans were actually the ones who tainted Orochi's will. Humans in desperate rush for power" He continued, while revealing the contents of his pocket: a white headband.
The train stopped once again. "But how?" Iory asked, before the exit door opened and they proceeded to walk out of the train, only to be stopped a few steps ahead. While other transients passed right by them, Iory was clearly shocked to stare at the person looking straight towards them. "e-e--"
"Even when concealing yourselves between these crowds is a futile effort at best. But I easily understand that such thing is not your motive…" That familiar voice was well rooted within those who knew of the true drives behind Ryu's actions. "Ne, Hoshi-sama?" The warm tone offered by this person came as something of a sanctuary for both Hoshi Ryu and Yagami Iory.
"Yapari..." Ryu dryly said.
----------------------------
Meanwhile
"Well, you sure this is the place Brit?" Ken said.
"According to both of our lads here with us, it is so" Cammy said, while glaring towards a sole place. "... the place that extends between Mitaka, Suginami, and Setagaya... this nation's so called Top High School: Justice Academy" Cammy further added.
"... that's saying a mouthful" Roy said.
"Well, since you and Delgado here; no pun intended..." she giggled a bit under her breath, while looking back towards Boman and Roy. "...since you two found this place, I've got around and did some research on the odds and ends of this school, and with your info on the location here, we further pushed Ryu's original plan on the right path" She added, sounding a bit more serious.
"Wow. There's just so much about that last part that sounds just plain wrong when it comes to talking about Ryu" Ken said.
"What do you mean, Masters?" Boman sounded curious.
"Told you Delgado, call me Ken, and... well, it's kind of a long story, but since Justice's still a bit far..." Ken scratched his head, trying to think of something good for his next delivery.
"Just spill it, Masters" Ken had a slight twitch on his left eye after hearing Roy's tone, clearly trying to push his buttons.
"... Well, I'm sure you know that Ryu, despite being an overall nice person, is not really an out-going kind of guy. What you guys probably don't know is that, despite always being of the quiet kind, Ryu was a lot more extroverted when we were younger"
While Ken kept on walking, after a few moments he realized that both Boman and Roy had stopped completely a few feet behind. When he looked back. "Hey, what's wrong?"
"Uh, are you sure we're talking about the same guy?" Roy said, with a puzzled face tattered where normally only a smirk is detected. "Or are you just talking out of your--"
PAKK!
"Ow, ow! Again?" Roy complained while reaching for the back of his head with both hands.
"Bromwell! What did I tell you?" Cammy looked and sounded menacing enough to make him gulp silently.
"... go on, Masters" The voice Roy used almost had a squeak to it.
"Tell me, Cammy: Do you remember when you first met Ryu and me?"
"Sure I do! Back in the first day of school here in Japan; I had become acquainted with Chun-Li just a month prior to that. She kept on talking about him. But it was just until I met him personally, that I got to know the truth: He was really a sweet guy"
"Right. Now tell me, do you remember what happened after we got back from the summer break that same year?" Ken used a particular tone. It wasn't derision, but I denoted a darker note.
Cammy looked down after fully understanding what Ken meant.
"He... he barely spoke to anyone for months. And when he did, he mostly spoke in Japanese" Both Roy and Boman looked at Cammy with a rather shocked stare. "At the end of our first year he opened up a bit, since he and Chun-Li had started dating, but he never got back to being the upbeat guy he once was" She added, while still looking very much sullen.
"What exactly happened, Ken?" Cammy's blue eyes opened in search for a revelation.
"Let's just say that from that point on, Ryu's outlook on life changed completely. I had already moved to the house I currently live in, and he-- well, we were still on speaking terms, but as you said Cammy: he was never the same. Not even when Chun and he started dating. Good thing that skinny girl came around" Ken smiled while remembering about that particular girl.
"Sakura? You think so?" Cammy lifted an eyebrow.
"You said it early on. His face gets all shiny every time she's mentioned"
"All shiny? Gee, you can't even co--"
PAAKK!
"OW!" Roy held the back of his head in pain, once again. "Boman, what the hell?!"
"I'm sorry Roy, but I don't think this is the time for you and Ken to start arguing about such things" Boman Delgado responded, with his calm demeanor contradicting such a sudden action.
"What do you--" Before Roy could continue, Boman pointed a peculiar situation right ahead.
"So... I guess this is IT" Roy said, while enthusiastically clenching his fist.
"Oh, don't give me that crock, Bromwell. Don't try to sound all cocky right now" The British student said in a quite crude tone.
"You know, for all your looks and pleasant accent, Brit... you sure have one helluva foul mouth" Ken said, while letting a slight chuckle out.
"Ah, but you know it drives you mad. You crave it" Cammy retorted, just as she assumed her fighting stance.
"That I do, Brit" Masters' smile couldn't be clearer.
"Students from Pacific Academy: Any and all attempts of fight back will be taken as aggressions directly aimed towards our honorable principal" A kid, who seemed to be the leader of the Justice Students, spoke in a quiet proper Japanese. His tone was cold.
"Fuck-a-doodle-doo, orange pricks!" Cammy shouted, while rushing towards her current opponents.
Roy and Boman shortly followed. Ken stood there, thinking something, unbeknownst to his teammates.
'That is, quite possibly, the sexiest foul talk I've ever heard. EVER'----------------------------
Meanwhile (yet again)
"No, I'm not letting my hair grow THAT long!" One of them said, significantly upset.
"Why? You'd look metal that way" The other said, in a rather campy tone.
"Why would I want to look metal?"
"Why do they speak of such trivial subjects right now?" And while Ryu and Iory seemed both unwilling to leave the topic at rest, Akira lamented such fact a few steps ahead.
"Try to overlook any silly commentary they may be making now, Kazama. And be focused, for an altercation lays ahead" Both Chizuru and Akira had a conversation of their own.
'God, since when did this turned into amateur poets' night?' Not that Akira wanted to take any part of it.
"Hey, you have to look the part. Besides, you told me you like metal!" Iory said, with an imposing bite to his words.
"Well, you look like one of those Shibuya-Kei guys... but I'm certain that you DO NOT want to sound like any of that" Ryu said. While probably well aware of the consequences, Ryu could feel the tension building at an incredible pace.
'Ah, crap' He quickly thought.
"I'm not having this argument with you, Hoshi!"
"What? It is not an..."
"La-la-LA-LA, I can't hear you!" Iory covered his ears using his index as if ear plugs, while he demonstrated a wildly offbeat denial.
'Must maintain focus... must not punch newly found band-mate in his stupid chin.' Ryu thought, while keeping his eyes wide shut. Suddenly, a feeling of impending danger ran through his spine, as he abruptly re-opened his eyes.
'A familiar presence?' Ryu quickly thought. Then, a second later, he let out an almost silent gasp. 'Masaka!'
"Yagami-sa--!" Albeit trying his best...
"LALALALA! Not listening!" Ryu's heed for normalcy fell on deaf ears.
"Oh, goody" Ryu's deadpan delivery didn't tan things off in the slightest manner...
Right afterwards, Hoshi assumed a stance; before Yagami could properly snap out of his childish behavior, Ryu used his shoulder as a prop...
"KYAA!" The ansatsuken practitioner allowed his battle cry to be heard loud and clear.
----------------------------
Foot Notes: Just in case it's not clear. All characters belong to CAPCOM, SNK and/or otherwise. However, this is my story. If you feel like playing the vicious little plagiarist, then I suggest you to think twice. Contact me, it ain't that hard. See you in the next chapter (when? Damned if I know...).