Jami: No problem! I wasn't really going to start the sequel just yet, but I only posted that because I wanted to give everyone a glimpse of what to expect.
Tao Shui: Yeah, people change as they grow older and for Kenny, I wanted to wipe out his old image and replace it with an older, more mature version. It's like having a new character, hehe.
Kikoken: Of course they'll get out of there. I'll have everyone hating me if I kill off all the characters in one big explosion and – the end.
Vammy: Thanks for your compliments. I'm very driven to make the sequel a lot better than the original. If not better, then at least very different. According to those who reviewed my Dragon Ball fanfics, the sequel was completely different in nature and story to the first, despite having the exact same characters, so I hope I can pull that off here as well. But with the Street Fighter sequel, I'm going all out. I just hope everyone likes it as much as they liked this one, maybe even more!
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SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1 Bison stood hunched over, clutching the bullet wound in his shoulder as the Street Fighters bickered amongst themselves. What a pathetic bunch of losers. It was hard to believe they made it this far. If it wasn't for the American military infiltrating his base, he could've easily wiped them all out. But now that his resources had been destroyed, the only thing the dictator had was the power of the psycho drive on his side, a power that he had every intention of exploiting.
He summoned all the energy into his body and prepared his finished move - the Super Psycho Crusher. It was a powerful moderation of the original, only the energy surrounding his body was concentrated enough to strike surrounding targets, as opposed to only one target. Bison executed the move as the street fighters argued amongst themselves. The chi around his body rapidly grew as he approached his first target, but Charlie had noticed the coming attack.
Damn that Charlie Nash. He was the perfect Shadow soldier. He adapted perfectly to the Dr. Feng's Shadow technology - or should he say, the technology adapted to him. The only trait that worked against Bison's cause was his ridiculous sense of justice that had now proven to be a major obstacle. The Air Force pilot jumped through the bickering street fighters and pointed a rifle that was now at point blank range, his only chance to shoot the life out of the dictator. The military man pulled the trigger three times, but the force field surrounding Bison deflected the bullets as they bounced uselessly off the target, ricocheting straight into Charlie's body.
The amount of blood that came out was phenomenal. Bison had heard about the human body carrying a lot of blood, but he had yet to actually see it. True, his organization was responsible for taking countless lives, innocent or not, but up to this point, he hadn't actually murdered anyone with his own hand ... at least not that he could recall.
Bison mercilessly ripped through the street fighters, the sound and smell of their burning injured bodies forcing a smile onto his dark sunken face. He landed from the move, confident that he'd hit all of them - he was overconfident.
The blonde female attacked first. "Hayagake!" she yelled, running towards him from behind. Bison spun around to retaliate against her attack but he was too late. She swung her foot out low, smashing her heel against his shin, as a sharp pain exploded from the point of contact and radiated up and down his leg. But the kunoichi didn't stop there. Using her gained momentum from the run, she pushed with her legs, launching her body upward as she wrapped her arms tightly around Bison's waist. His weight now moving with her momentum, she smashed him headfirst into the ground.
Bison flew a few feet as the Maki bounced away to safety. She let him lie there for a second, recovering from the painful moved she just performed. That was a mistake she should've never made.
Bison didn't lie down for long. He jumped into the air, soaring above Maki and the other street fighters, and came down hard and fast with both feet connected with her skull, and bounced back into the air. The second hit would be more powerful than the first, channeling the psycho energy into his palms, striking her again on the skull harder and faster this time. The move was strong enough to give her a concussion, sending her already unconscious body flying through the air, making a dull thud as it came into contact with the ground.
The other street fighters retaliated. Cody charged forward as Bison was recovering from the move and swung a vicious left hook and followed up with a right hook. A miniature cyclone followed the second hit, stirred up by the speed of his fists, tacking on a few extra hits to Bison's bloody face. Immediately after Cody had performed his move, he retreated and Bison pursued – ramming straight into a flaming red hadouken shot forth from Ryu's fists. The chi ball battered Bison with five hits, the last one forcing the dictator a safe distance backwards. Before Bison's body could even touch the ground, Charlie acted. It was his turn now as he performed three simultaneous somersaults on the ground, each one catching Bison's flailing body, the somersault launching both him and Charlie high into the air. Again as Bison hurtled back towards ground level, Ken position himself directly under the near unconscious dictator and performed his trademark "Shinryuken", enveloping the target in a pillar of light as he twirled gracefully skyward, hammering blow after blow into Bison.
The monstrous combination attack had finally ended, but instead of smashing into the floor in an unconscious heap, Bison was somehow able to catch himself in midair and remain hovering above the six disappointed street fighters. Despite all their attempts to weaken the Shadowlaw head, he was still powerful enough to survive their attacks. He looked somewhat injured, having a bleeding lip and a few tears along the red suit that he wore under gray, rusting armor. But other than a few mere cuts and bruises, he was all right and ready to fight some more, and fight he did.
Summoning some energy in the seemingly endless supply of Psycho power, he dashed towards the street fighters, feet first knocking all six of them senseless with an impressive array of lightning fast kicks yelling, "Knee Press Nightmare!" None of them stood a chance against him, for with every strike performed in this move the target would be engulfed in a fiery blue tongue of flame. That, added to the fact that Bison moved with such speed and grace kicking with his legs alone, rendered the street fighters completely defenseless and at his mercy.
"May your knees forever bend before the power of the Psycho Drive," Bison taunted, standing over the six fallen warriors. "I tire of this foolish childs play."
"I'm not letting you get away," Charlie said between gasps, his limps trembling with the simple effort of standing.
"Fool." Bison shot an energy ball at him, placing him back where he belonged – on the ground. "I've activated the self destruct sequence."
"How?" Maki asked. "You were fighting us the whole time."
"The Psycho Power," Bison replied simply. "It's the energy that controls all the Shadowlaw bases. Because I am the source of this power, it allows me to control everything automatically with my mind."
"Then you have sentenced yourself to death with us!" Ryu retorted. "Who's the real fool?"
"I will live to start a third Alpha tournament," Bison said, ignoring Ryu's condescending question. "What you are experiencing now is only a taste of Shadowlaw's power. The final stage of my plan will unfold then. Unfortunately, you will not be alive to see it." Without another word, Bison disappeared completely in a ripple of space and time, leaving the street fighters to their doom.
"Attention," came the cool female voice on the audio system, "detonation in five minutes. Repeat, complete detonation in five minutes. All employees proceed to the emergency platform."
"We'll never make it out in time," Maki said, tears welling up in her eyes.
"We still gotta try, girl," Cody said, grunting with effort as he rose to his feet. He headed over to Maki and helped her up, the both of them cringing in pain and limping from their collected injuries.
Together, the six street fighters limped for the doorway, slowly but surely making their way out of the base. It was such a long trek, everyone was certain they would perish in the explosion, but nobody was willing to sit and accept death in Shadowlaw's disintegrating base. They had only reached the doorway to Bison's hangar, just a few feet away where the final battle took place when the computer's voice came back onto the speaker. "Four minutes until detonation. Repeat, four minutes until detonation. All employees proceed to the emergency platform." It took them one minute to cover such a short distance.
"Oh god, we are gonna die," Ken said biting his lower lip. For that, he received a backhand across the face from Ryu.
"That's not the Ken I know," he said pushing himself along. "We're going to make it out of here alive. I'm not allowing Bison to be rid of us that easily and neither should you."
"Ah!" came a sudden outcry from Maki. The Shotokan warriors turned around, already seeing Guile and Charlie gazing at the same thing. Standing in their way, extending their hands forward to help were Chun Li and Sakura, each of them charred and sweaty from the heat of the fires that raged around the complex. The best part – they were sitting in a Shadowlaw jeep, complete with machine guns poking out the back from each side.
"We're gonna blow up in four minutes," Sakura yelled. "Come on!"
"Thanks, we didn't hear the audio warning," Ken said rolling his eyes, but thankfully accepting the schoolgirl's hand.
"Good thing you're both safe," Ryu said. Then he noticed Sakura. "What are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay at the hospital!"
"Now isn't a good time to debate this," she said, thankfully saving herself temporarily from a scolding. "We gotta get outta here.
* * *
The complex ignited in huge flames before completely exploding, sending tones of dirt and debris miles into the air. The shockwave was enough to nearly topple the jeep as it sped away from the complex. But it could've flipped for everyone could care. The most dangerous part was over. As they savored the sounds of raining debris and the Shadowlaw base burning in an intense inferno, Sakura tilted her head and rested it on Ryu's shoulder. He looked at the schoolgirl in surprise and was about to ask her what she was doing, but decided that for someone so young, what she'd just been through was probably extremely traumatic.
"I wonder if they made it out okay," she mumbled, slowly drifting to sleep.
"You wonder if who made it out?" Ryu asked, pulling a tail of her headband away from her face.
"Sagat, Juli and Kenny …"
Ryu's heart sank. He didn't want to have to tell Sakura the truth. He didn't want to tell her about Kenny's gruesome death.
"Sakura …" he began, trying to swallow the dry lump in his throat, "Kenny didn't make it. He's dead."
"What?" she asked in shock. "How do you know this?"
"Because I was the one that killed him," he replied sadly.
"That's not possible," Chun Li said, interrupting from the driver's seat. "He was with Sagat and Juli. They tried convincing us to leave the base, but Sakura and I agreed to look for you before leaving."
"Are you sure?" Cody asked. "All of us saw it – we saw Ryu kill him. We all saw his body lying in a pool of his own blood with a hole the size of a fucking dinner plate punched through his chest!"
"He was alive and well when we saw him," Chun Li said, Sakura nodding in agreement with her statement. "We left him with them because we knew they would be going somewhere safe while we went to look for you."
"Assuming he was alive, you left him with Shadowlaw agents?" Guile asked. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Whatever the case, I'm sure Kenny's safe," Chun Li said firmly, attempting to end the conversation.
"Yeah, but how are we gonna confirm that?"
"We'll find out when we're back at headquarters. Wherever Kenny is, we'll find him."
Sakura leaned back onto Ryu, adjusting her position. She hoped Chun Li was right. Hell, she hoped Ryu was wrong. It was obvious by now that her and Chun Li were the last ones to see Kenny and he was definitely alive, although the others seemed to believe otherwise. She just crossed her fingers and hoped that wouldn't be the last time they saw him …