The sun hangs high overhead, raining light and heat down onto the U.S. Military excavation crew examining the ruins of Rugal Bernstein's underground missile base, on a bluff beside the ocean. The base was leveled last year, when the final battles of the 1995 King of Fighters tournament rocked it to its foundation. As the very same tournament comes to a grinding halt on the other side of the planet, the workers who find no shelter from the outside heat in the pitch darkness of the underground work to enter a portion of the base that has been inaccessible for a year now.
"This is insane. Every day we come in here, and keep drilling and drilling at this blast door with everything we've got. Acetylene torches and even diamond drills, and every day there's more and more shit to drill through." one of the workers says to another, pausing to let the flare on his torch ignite.
"No shit," the other worker agreed, flicking a switch on his flashlight to cause a long line of light to shoot out and follow the line of the cut in the huge metal blast door. "We've been sawing through this all day, I wish we could just get some dynamite and blast the damn thing."
"Here, here!" the other soldier exclaimed. "Wait here, I'm going to go up and get some new acid caps to load into that cut you made." he rose, dusting off baggy blue pants of the thick, protective variety, and flipped up his goggles. Each corner of the broken down corridor was lit up with dim white phosphorous lamps. Wires running from each of the lamps made a trail that lead out of the room and up a flight of metal stairs, to a tarmac where the army had rigged their own elevator.
"Screw that, I'm going with you," said the second soldier. "Anything to get some of that sea-kissed air. The oxygen down here tastes like gasoline."
"Nah, that's just your breath."
"Fuck you," he replied, moving to join his comrade. "So, do you think the Black Noah is really docked down here somewhere?"
"No idea, but I wouldn't be surprised. We've seen some pretty crazy—" the first soldier stopped talking as he spied a figure up at the top of the stairs, holding the wires to the lamp. The figure was easily seven feet tall, but that was all either one of them could make out, because with a jerk, he tore the wires apart. A surge of electricity washed over the mystery-man's body for a moment, and was followed by a cascade of orange sparks that exploded in every direction.
The lights went off immediately.
"What in the—" the second soldier fumbled for his flashlight as the sounds of feet descending on metal steps filled the room. He couldn't even finish his sentence when he felt himself being driven into the wall so hard half the bones in his body shattered and the steel frame dented.
"Reese!?" his companion shouted, "what happened Ree—" and then his voice was cut off when something that felt like doubled up iron struck his jaw and sent him headlong into a steel bulkhead.
The only sound that followed was that of a thick blast door's metal groan as fingers dug into it and powerful arms folded it down like the lid on a sardine can.
Scores of soldiers abruptly piled into corridor, shining lights and shouting wildly, just as stone, steel, and wires came crashing down in front of them. Once the dust cleared, their lights revealed the corridor they had been working weeks at entering had just caved in. The blast door lay rolled up like some old rug and discarded to the side meaninglessly.
"My god," the commanding officer spoke silently to himself. "Get a medic down here, now!"
"Sir, yes sir!" a soldier near the top of the stairs shouted, rushing back towards the elevator.
What could have done this? the commanding officer asked himself, as he stared at the enfolded steel obstruction. Drills and torches couldn't chew through in hours, yet somehow it's been taken apart in just seconds, and all we have now is more debris in the path and two dead soldiers.
Half a mile down, in the dank guts of the missile base is the docking zone of a once-ominous airship. It traversed the skies, seas, and undersea in its day, when it was the chariot of one of the most feared men in the world. There is a hidden cove where the ocean rushes in too dangerously for anything but the former resident of this docking zone to pass through safely, and it is this same ocean water that now works to slowly submerge the once mighty Black Noah.
The cove is dark and covered in walls of rock and a ceiling of metal. One far end of the cove, built into the rock near the place where the Black Noah is docked is a metal tower hundreds of yards high. It serves as a shaft for the elevator leading up to the main missile base. It has not whirred to life in a year, since many heroes made a hasty retreat from this place as it threatened to explode.
That shaft now lights up as the elevator descends.
Meanwhile, below-decks in the half-sunken Black Noah, there is a great flash of white light, and a once mighty wind, dying just the same as the one who commands it fills the room, tossing broken bits of metal and shards of glass around, bouncing them off walls and broken monitors.
The heavenly brilliant strobe of light fades, and a dying, tattered Goenitz stumbles, falling against an old table that used to serve as a visual screen for a map. He coughs, and blood spills from his mouth, leaving a bright crimson splatter on the black glass of the display. "I am not long for this world," he hisses between blood covered teeth. "And I do not intend to go without leaving a mark."
"Bernstein," Goenitz sputtered, lifting a hand towards a wall of broken stone and metal that is now charred black from the blast that ended Rugal's life. "Your body is dead, but bits of your flesh remain-within."
Goenitz closes his eyes as agony rips through his tortured body. He tries to focus the energies that have been his to command so long they are second nature, and finds nothing but burning pain clouding his focus. His eyes fall upon the blocked off chamber, and cloud as he feels his last moments upon him.
"Your mind, I can feel it, echoing through the very walls of this place," Goenitz whispers. "And even stronger, in the chamber where you met your death. Your spirit lingers still!"
Goenitz pushes himself up off the map table and staggers towards the charred debris, falling flat on his face midway to his destination. "I will give you what you wanted, Bernstein," Goenitz says aloud to no one, "and release the nightmare of a reality with you as the newest charge of Orochi upon this cursed world. But alas...I die, denied my goal by a wall I could have moved with the slightest of my breath just a day ago."
Goenitz's eyes snap open just as they deigned to fall shut when fingers suddenly appeared between the doors of an elevator at the rear of the room. As the protesting shriek of tortured metal claws at his ears, he watches as the seven-foot plus unknown, muscles bulging, pulls the elevator doors open, forcing the hydraulic pumps to hiss and emit huge gasps of white steam.
The man known as Urien steps through the jets of steam, his skin the color of tarnished iron, his hair short and white as snow, his eyes a pupil-less white to match. He wears a beige sports-coat and dress slacks, shining brown wingtips, and a white dress shirt underneath, giving him the look of a dignified businessman. He pats dust and metal filings off of the shoulders of his suit before stepping into the room, where Goenitz slowly rises.
An aura of hatred, a thirst for blood, and a lust for power. This man is not unlike Bernstein himself. Goenitz eyes narrow at the man, Urien, as he steps closer.
"You there, what do you know of this place?" Urien demands. He gets no reply.
"Answer me," Urien reaches out and closes an iron hand over the jugular of the wounded Heavenly King, lifting him into the air, "or I shall take away your ability to do so."
A long smile spreads across the dying man's face, wickedly long from corner to corner, accented with a demonic glint of purple in the backs of his eyes. "You are called Urien," Goenitz begins, having picked up on the apparent thoughts of the man clutching at his throat. "I am...called Goenitz of Orochi."
"Orochi?" Urien's eyebrows crease. "The Demon-King?"
"The same."
"Why are you here, dead man?" Urien asks, dropping Goenitz body to the metal floor carelessly.
Goenitz rubs at his neck, and then answers. "To perform one last miracle."
The Orochi power is something I have heard spoken of in myth, Urien thinks, yet it cannot be discounted, for all talk of my own brother occurs in legend as well, and he is as real as the blood in my veins. The thought sends a stream of heat through Urien's blood.
"You feel my power, do you not?" Goenitz hisses. "It was once...greater..." Goenitz begins to trail off and collapse, but Urien catches him by the throat and shakes him.
"Live, you fool, there is more to be said!"
"Indeed," Goenitz sputters, coughing up blood. "...astute of you."
"Lead me to this power, tell me the way!" Urien demands, throwing Goenitz against a wall as his need to surpass his brother over-takes him.
"Very well...but be warned...in this world...you may find Orochi...and it may find you...but you will never relish the encounter...if you do not hold favor..." Goenitz uncurls a hand, and points at the wall of tangled wires and broken chunks of blackened debris. "Remove the wall, and I shall bring unto you a guide in my stead...a guide to Orochi!"
No sooner were the words out of the dying man's mouth then were the fists of Urien busily tearing away the rubble, overturning it in huge pieces until the half flooded chamber of Rugal was open once more. Every last wall in the chamber is charred black, scarred by the remnants of a battle waged long ago.
"Good." Goenitz spoke, rising to his feet as if he had never been injured. He strides past Urien in the same manner, and then slumps over once inside.
"Dead man, are you?"
"Quiet." Goenitz hisses. "He is here."
"Who?" Urien's eyes narrowed, and for a moment he almost expects Gill to appear in a cascade of fire from above, but he does not.
A metal orb forming somewhat of an island in the center of the flooded chamber becomes Goenitz focus, for it is the mechanical brain of Black Noah. "I do not have enough power to recreate the flesh that sustained you," said Goenitz as he began pouring his will and life into the orb at the center of the room.
For a moment, nothing appeared to happen, and Urien began to step forward, but was driven back by a wall of pure light. For a moment, Urien's ears exploded in pain, and he became aware of the voices of the dead and the thoughts of the Darkstalkers now walking the land of Majigen. Urien reeled, for on the ends of this touch of the spirit world, he felt something more, something sinister, garnered in purple and burning like fire. Urien's eyes opened, and he found himself kneeling.
Arising with a scowl, Urien moved over to where Goenitz had fallen, except Goenitz had changed. He was still slumped, with hands outstretched, but he was completely white, and none of his facial features could be made out. Urien reached out and touched Goenitz on the shoulder, and his body came apart all at once, dissipating in a cloud of powdery ash.
With that, the metal orb in the middle of the room dented upward, as if something within were trying to escape, like a bird from its egg.
Urien shifted back defensively as he felt a new aura of power emanate from the center of the room. Another blow from within broke through the surface of the Black Noah's core mind, and a flesh arm rose up from it, wrapped in thick black hoses.
"I YET LIVE!" Rugal's voice boomed through the room like thunder as Urien stood by, lone witness to a mad god's resurrection.
If you liked that, read the rest of Street Fighter vs. King of Fighters: Nightmare Symbiosis at http://www.theshortbus.addr.com/SFVSKOF/