Author's Notes: Hi, this is the sequel to 'Crawling In The Dark' . It will be hard to understand this one, if not for reading that one. So, please take your time and read that one before reading this. Otherwise, nothing is understood. I wanted to post this earlier, but I hadn't found a title for it(To new readers, I always take titles for the song lyrics used in the chapter.) and so I had to go online and look for songs, world wide and so I finally found one that fitted the theme of the story. I tried to make this darker than it's prequel, please tell me if it is. Anyway, please review. Not onto the disclaimer.

** Disclaimer: I do not own Dead Or Alive, I wish I did though. And I do not own Tecmo, so sue me (Even though, I don't think you'll get much)…. But I do own my original characters, and anyone whose read it's prequel knows who.**

Anyway, I have my own little usage of HTML text. Look below:

Normal text - the story and basically, what's happening…..

Italic text- thoughts, insight from certain characters, and sometimes to indicate the way a word is written, I mean, to put depth in the word.

Bold text- dreams, memories and flashbacks. These will be rarely placed, but can come on an occasional streak.

Bold Italic text- Song lyrics, which I *unfortunately* don't own. There will be one in this chapter.

In The Shadows

* No sleep, no sleep until I'm done with finding the answer

Won't stop, won't stop before I find the cure for this cancer

Sometimes, I feel like I'm going down and so disconnected

Somehow, I feel like I'm haunted to be wanted…

I've been watching, I've been waiting

In the shadows for my time

I've been searching, I've been living for tomorrow

All my life*

- In The Shadows, The Rasmus

Darkness covered everything with potential to be seen, in the room. One man woke up, inside the darkness. After his long awaited awakening, he looked around. Merely, scanning the place with his eyes. Trying to recognize anything; anything at all. No thoughts or memories were displayed in his mind. At all.

Nothing. That was the word that could describe the strange nothingness, the man felt deep inside of him. The nothingness included feelings of loneliness, and being forsaken. The loneliness came from being all alone for a long time, like he had. And the feelings of being forsaken appeared with the fact that he didn't remember who he was himself, then how would others not have forsaken him already.

His life was like a puzzle, many different pieces to it; pieces to be put together and the picture to unfold. There was a difference, though. The pieces of his life, were scattered and the remains were burnt; leaving him with nothing.

And he tried so hard to remember his past or anything that remotely had anything to do with it. To find nothing, but a waste of time; The time he spent searching his soul for memories, trying to fool himself that he'd find something….. anything. That's when he realized that he had lost his memory. In a way, he knew nothing of and probably never would.

A man without a memory was no one and nothing could bring back memories that forever were erased inside of him. Even though, deep scars would always remain. He felt as if he had been through a traumatic moment in his past, that had scarred him for life.

The young man looked around. He wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere he wouldn't have to feel the emptiness inside him, but he knew that it always be a part of him. If only he knew…..

He knew one thing, as much as he hated to think about it, he had woken up in this mysterious place earlier. This wasn't the first time; he had woken up in this place. But those times, he tried to fall back to sleep, reminding himself that it was only a dream and that he'd wake up to reality, in his mind. More like a nightmare, a nightmare no one deserved to be haunted by. The nightmare haunted him, but it wasn't a nightmare. It was reality. The harsh reality, he had to face. No matter what, even if he tried to escape. Which was damn near impossible.

All he saw was darkness. Maybe, the darkness, which had engulfed everything, was as dark as his past. That was of course something he knew would now. If not, for a miracle. And that was something, he couldn't put his pessimistic mind to believe. He wasn't going to fool himself, again and he had no one to trust. Not even, himself.

He tried to move. To leave, to simply walk away from this place. But could he? One answer appeared clearly in his mind.

No.

That was because, the man found himself chained to a machine-like object. His wrists and ankles were sore, and it was obvious that he had been chained there for a long time. A damn long time, and that was a shame. As hard as he tried to break loose, he couldn't. He wasn't free anymore. But then again, when had he been?

That he could not answer.

Light; light entered the room, almost blinding the young man. That could only mean one thing; he had been in the shadows of the darkness surrounding him for too long. The young man did however force himself to place pain upon himself, as he looked upwards to the light. The light came from a steel door, which was quickly pushed open and let a figure come in.

He saw a silhouette, clearly as the door closed. Now, he only saw the stranger's silhouette. Could he possible know the person?

The question remained inside him. He averted his gaze to the silhouette, to see a tall muscular figure with broad shoulders; A man.

The door, which was cut in a down going diagonal form, slid shut quickly and stole all the light away from the room.

Footsteps; He heard footsteps clearly, coming towards him. He struggled to get out of the chains, almost accomplishing that goal. He shook the chains so hard, he almost faltered. The chains did stop him from faltering, as he continued with attempts to escape the firm grip the chains held him in.

The footsteps stopped. A small light appeared, coming from a simple cigarette lighter. The young man took a chance to look at the silhouette, because the light could disappear any minute.

The silhouette's prime features were now seen clearly; A thin face with a deep scar and few wrinkles along it, unruly black hair and raven eyes, prevented the man from looking like the average man in the mid-forties. The older man wore a black suit, along with a devilish grin; which looked as if it couldn't even be slapped of his face. The suit indicated that he was celebrating something, and the grin displayed in his facial features was an addition to that train of thought.

The grin was soon replaced with an evil glare; the man shot the younger man. The glare was unique and the older man looked dead serious. He wondered why, but wouldn't bring himself to think about it. It would just make him wonder why this was happening to him, why him out of all the people, that exist on earth.

He never really liked pondering on that, letting his pessimistic imagination fly away with him. Leaving with what he already had; nothing. 

The stranger down at him and being taller than him, made that easier to do. His eyes flashed dangerously, just as he began to speak. " Well, well, well…."

The repeated word started to annoy the younger man, who still remained silent and waited for a continuation. " Finally, you've awakened. I've been expecting you."

The words rang in the younger man's head, and the words became louder and angrier in tone, when repeated in his mind. He had no reply, to give the raven haired stranger. Nothing of any value, atleast. Or so, he thought.

" Why….Why am I here?" He tore away from his thoughts, and managed to stutter those words of utter confusion.

" Don't act dumb with me, boy. You know perfectly well why. And now, you will feel the pain I felt, when you left me to die two years ago. But I survived and as you can see nothing and no one can kill me. Not you, not your father." He finished off and started to play with the lighter, he held clutched in his hand. The raven haired man left, shortly after. Without a word.

He scanned an area, after a while. He saw a machine, there. It had devices and other various machines plugged into it, and looked to be very advanced. It was a circle shaped, machine, which had a metallic cover over it and was quite bulky. He realized that it was a cryogenic chamber, used for cryo-freezing bodies and preserving various genetic materials for usage in important and advanced research and experiments. There was a person inside the machine, a young woman.

The young woman was very pale and had long auburn hair. Her eyes were of brown color that matched the one of milk chocolate perfectly. Traditional garb, that was typical ninja wear, she wore. A sleeveless blue kimono with white lining and golden Kanji letters at the back, was what she wore. The outfit fitted her slim and quite curvy body. White stockings, knee high boots and matching gloves were worn as accessories. Rare accessories, that weren't seen often.

He noticed that the woman's eyes hid deep sorrow in them, it was strangely revealed to him by her happy disposition. Her eyes were the only thing that kept her from looking perfectly joyful. It made her unique and stuck out, in other words.

He averted his gaze to something else; his hands and feet.

The chains around his hands were broken, as soon as the man put his hands together and separated them, causing a piece of the chain to break apart from the rest of it. A sound was heard, clearly; it made him look back to the chamber. Nothing; hallucination was starting to get the best of him, as he had been alone for so long.

The young man drifted out of his thoughts and back into reality. Then, he started to struggle to break loose and get out of the chains, after failing previous attempt at the action. He broke loose throwing a chain to the ground and started to unlock the other one. He punched at the metal chain, to get it away. The chain remained in it's place, and he stood up, after hearing a sound.

The noise informed him that someone was there; creeping around in the shadows of the darkness he was in. He suddenly felt something, hit him in the head. Pain crawled through his body and he blacked out, falling unconscious to the ground and loosing all sense of control, he had; which wasn't much. His eyes closed, as his head collided with the ground. Pain shooting through his entire body, once again.

¤

Author's Notes: The begin. It might seem crappy, but the story will unveil more and more, as the chapters come. This is only the prologue. Tell me what you think.