"For you, my friend, they are the angels of death."
-Man against monster. Monster against self. The story is as old as time. Living above us, below us, and among us, they assimilate themselves into our culture, and us into theirs. To the common man, they are simply known as night terrors, but to the initiated, they are the Darkstalkers-
EPISODE FIVE: GRUMPY DEAD MEN
Anakaris' eyes opened slowly. He was arraigned in his pharaonic adornments: the head mask, the golden tunic, and the arm and leg bracers, all in striped of gold and blue. The rest of his body was only garbed in his linen funeral wrappings.
All around him he saw small, crimson-colored flames floating in an endless darkness, having nothing to cast light upon save each other and himself. All of the flames are aligned in circular rows extending outward from him.
Anakaris fell to his knees and moaned with grief, "I have failed you, Gods of Egypt! May the scales of Ma'at show mercy on my soul!"
"Mercy iz somethin' ye have to earn in this world", a distorted, raspy echo resembling the voice of a Britannic man called through the darkness, causing the already shaken Anakaris to sit up and look about himself with keen eyes.
As his body began to tremble, a figure approaching from that darkness beyond gave him a reason to be afraid. The figure was tall, though by no means as tall as he, and gaunt as a skeleton. In fact, that is almost exactly what it appeared to be: a skeleton with spiky violet locks of hair adorning its' skull like unto devilish horns and just enough skin, decomposed muscle, and exposed tissue remains to fill it out. Regardless of the 'outer skin', a thin film of albino white over its mostly bony frame, it was clearly held together by supernatural animation. Its eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, were blood red.
Dependant on the beholder, the most obscene feature of this creature may have been its body, or perhaps it was the clothing with which it adorned itself. Semi-ragged plum trousers were held in place by a spiked, black leather belt at the waist and by heavy brown leather boots, over one of which a spiked black leather leg cuff was placed, at the bottom. Over the hands were fingerless gloves, the same color as the trousers, with three distinct metal studs on the back of each.
The ghoulish apparition strutted his way past the flames, letting his (on closer inspection, the figure was clearly intended to be a male) arms dangle wildly about him in a carefree meander. He seemed to be singing to himself in a strange tongue with an admittedly charismatic voice, but that was about the only trait he possessed which did not utterly turn the stomach upside down. He also seemed to be taking his sweet time before finally walking right up to edge of the inner circle of flames in which Anakaris stood.
Anakaris kept his eyes keen, "What is the meaning of this place, sorcerer?"
The ghastly vocalist tilted his head to the side, twisting his neck around completely upside-down like an owl, and then back to its intended position. A demonic smile crossed his face and he reached up, "Ohhhhh greeeeeat magiiiic POKE!" He slammed two disgusting bony fingers into the mummy's eyes and laughed, "Loser!"
Anakaris was angry now, "You putrid little jackal! Prepare to die!" He raised his own arms and shouted an echoing mummy's curse at the sarcastic ghoul.
The green mist escaped from under his golden mask, but as it began to surround the figure in question, a strange series of electric sparks went off, and the horrible creature laughed in a high-pitched, maniacal, even unearthly manner.
The fog had dissipated and the ghoul was unscathed. His red eyes met with Anakaris' now bloodshot orbs and flashed with the cold fire of the grave. Before the pharaoh could react, he found that his opponent had been raised up on a high platform along with an equally high podium in front of him.
The menacing creature took out a steel gavel and slammed it on the podium, making a ponderous thud, "The Court've Lord Raptor is in session. Presidin'? Who else but Yerz Truly, and the case is Hell versus The Big, Ugly Dude."
Anakaris foamed with rage, his fists clenching, "HOW DARE THEE! I AM THE SUN! I AM THE LORD OF THE LANDS ABOVE AND BELOW THE EARTH!"
The 'judge', now calling himself Lord Raptor, promptly turned around and lowered his pants, baring his bony buttocks to the defendant, "The Court moves that ye should blow it out yer arse. The defendant iz accused of causing a major upset in the Human World that cost many lives an' created massive paperwork for a certain angry judge, attempting to conquer the world, and otherwise bein' a naughty lil' jackass."
Lord Raptor leaned over the podium and grinned with those big, biting teeth of his, "How do ye plead, jackass." The accusation had been laid down.
Anakaris looked up at his unworthy prosecutor and decided that, if he was to be degraded in this manner, he would muster as much pride as possible, "I plead guilty."
Lord Raptor scratched his chin, "I see. Well, well, what're we gonna do with ye then? I could put yer soul in a purgatory file for the remainder of your sentence."
Anakaris gritted his teeth, "And how long is that may I inquire."
The judge laughed, "Forever."
Anakaris had about had enough of this, "Unreasonable!"
Raptor laughed harder, "Like ye've got any say in th' matter. I'm really not 'sposed t' do this, but I'm thinking yer too stiff a stick to break so easily an' I'm bored as, heh, Hell today anyway, so I'll play a little game with ye if yer up for it."
Anakaris narrowed his eyes, "Go to Hell."
The ghoulish Lord only grinned back to this before replying, "Where, praytell, do ye think we've been having this lil' courtroom soap? Tell ye what; I'll make ye a wager t' motivate ye to play: if ye win, ye'll get me guitar. It contains my most powerful magic and could revive ye completely as per yer plans."
Anakaris was all business, "And if you win?"
Raptor snickered, "I get to eat yer soul and take yer powers."
Anakaris crossed his arms, "What are your terms demon."
~
Talbain was walking home with a sack of groceries under each arm. The long walk to his inner city apartment with food he was used to just hunting and eating in cans, cartons, and other unnecessarily heavy containers reminded him vaguely of weight training as a kid.
He was a few blocks from his place when the dark clouds began to gather overhead. Rapid and threatening, he knew this was a severe storm at best and something to be far more cautious of at worst. The fighter set down his groceries and stood as straight and still as possible like a meerkat, nose searching for any strange aromas.
The clouds had merged now into a thick quilt of dark blue spanning the entire sky. Sparks of streak lightning coursed from cloud to cloud at an alarming rate.
~
Both alarmed and confused, Felicia was stumbling about in another part of the city. Her cat-like senses were a wreck and she could barely see straight. The smell of death and corruption in the air was strong, but there was an obscure charisma to it all that drew you in before repelling you. She was somewhere between the waves of all this.
Felicia had been heading to a meeting with her agent that very afternoon. Obviously this wasn't going to pan out, but she was more worried about her physical health than the health of her ego at this point. After a good fifteen minutes of this torture, she tripped onto her face involuntarily, losing consciousness for the time being.
~
Talbain wasn't looking so great himself. A cold sweat had enveloped his body and the sound of people falling around him with a yielding groan was making him sicker. He hated to see suffering, whether it was a darkstalker or a human. The thought was simply adverse to the nobler traits of his character.
He was currently dressed in a blue denim vest, blue jeans, and his favorite homemade brown leather boots, but all were soaked with his own perspiration as he struggled along, trying his best not to fall under the strange spell of the aura, which, even now, enveloped the entire city in its grip of terror and mayhem.
As he neared Town Square, the unthinkable happened: things got worse. The bodies of several of the towns inhabitants, some of which he had come to know himself in the time he had been here, lay strewn about, half-eaten by some monster.
Talbain walked forward at the remains of a familiar face: Mrs. Jargon. The poor woman, only in her thirties, was laid out like a rag doll, part of her face missing. Talbain knelt down, holding her up in his arms. A tear fell down his face and his teeth began to grit as his body began to quiver with rage, "Why? Why is this happening!!!"
Human hands did not set down the body of the woman. They were now the furry white claws of the beast. Talbain's long ears perked as he heard what he thought to be guitar playing in the distance. He bounded off in the music's general direction.
~
The normally quiet cemetery's peace had been disturbed by a fierce wind howling as a result of the storm overhead and a notable guitar shredding in the style of a great progressive metal live show. The normally green grass over the graves, which were now open, had turned to a colorless gray as if partially burned.
The propagator of this unlikely 'concert' was none other than Lord Raptor himself. He stood atop a mausoleum, guitar raised high in the air and not missing a beat. All around him stood the normally peaceful inhabitants of the city, now members of his captive living dead audience, contributing as vessels for his evil energies.
Talbain sprang over the stone wall of the cemetery, still in lupine hybrid form, and snarled, "I don't know who you are, but it's time for you to die."
Raptor cackled at this, lowering his head into a sneer, "Can't do that friend. Already dead 'm afraid, but have a seat!" Just then a root within the ground reached up and tripped Talbain, knocking him into the open grave behind him which was easily six feet deep with no visible coffin at the bottom, "Show's jes beginnin' baby."
Talbain tried to leap from the grave. It would have been relatively easy if the roots from the plants growing below the ground hadn't animated themselves and reached out, holding him fast in his front row seat to the eerie spectacle. He gnashed his pointed teeth and clawed, kicked, and threw himself about with all his might trying to escape, but the more he struggled, the more branch-like appendages seemed to encircle him.
Now literally earthbound, the werewolf was helpless to intervene in the events to follow. Raptor, on the other hand, was reveling in his 'coming out party'. The dead spectators stood around him silently moving back and forth, possibly numbering one hundred in all. The ghoul continued to grind upon his musical axe.
"Now then", Lord Raptor looked towards a particularly monumental family tomb, "Lez bring our friend up t' speed an' get this show on th' road!" The devilish creature spun his guitar over his head twice and brought it down, making an unearthly distorted squeal on the high bar with his nimble, albeit rotten, fingertips.
In response to the sonic wave generated by the guitar, the tomb began to thunder and crack. Finally, it exploded from within and a bright golden light shone outward from the spot where it had been. There stood Anakaris- Ra in full pharaonic garb.
Talbain's eyes widened, "Not you!" He struggled even harder, still held captive by the evil animated vines of the graveyard. It was to no avail.
Raptor leapt from his perch and landed roughly two meters from Anakaris-Ra. The two of them assumed their individual stances, that of the mummy being straightforward and militant while the ghoul's was cunning and loose.
Anakaris had no intentions of playing around, "Let us end this."
Raptor, on the other hand, wanted nothing BUT to play. He cackled maniacally and ran forward, head lowered like a bull, slamming into the flat-footed Anakaris with his full dead weight (give or take ninety pounds). Knocked from his feet, the evil pharaoh found himself upon his oversized back.
He looked up to the demonic Raptor with malice in his eyes, "DIE YOU IMPUDENT DOG!" His forearm reached out with unnatural elasticity based on the fact that he was capable of magically multiplying his own linen 'exoskeleton' and gripped Raptor by the throat, dragging him at a whopping sixty miles per hour both into and across the dirt of the necropolis, embedding him within it and retracting his arm.
Anakaris stood, his only regret that the golden mask prevented his face from showing how pleased he was with himself, "Buried as a commoner's corpse should be!"
From beneath the ground, a sick laughter erupted and an explosion of dark energy went off as the morbid maniac lunged forward from underneath the mummy pharaoh, a whole new weapon (namely, a razor sharp chainsaw known as Skull), and literally dismembered both of Anakaris' legs at the knees, sending him crashing to the ground.
His legs vanishing, Anakaris raised himself up, floating upon his waist tunic as if it were a magic carpet taking him higher and higher into the air. He slowly glided downward at his opponent, wrapping both arms around each other and extending them in a bizarre projectile golden cobra's head that hardened at the end.
The megaton, skull-breaking attack hit Raptor head on, throwing him back against the ground and several feet just plain back with enough force to carve a three foot indent in the ground below that trailed to where the ghoul's body lay.
Raptor muttered a curse under his breath, not for any magical effects, but simply because he felt like it, and slowly raised his somewhat broken body to its feet.
Anakaris was still in the air, barreling down at him. This time, a green vapor escaped from under his mask as before. The pharaoh grinned beneath his faceplate, "You may be immune to my magic in your realm, but here you are as vulnerable as I."
The mist surrounded a confused Raptor and POOF! In his place was a tiny, mandolin sized battle-axe guitar with his shrunken head where the top should be. "This iz SO not my look", Raptor the Guitar shouted in a midget voice.
Anakaris put his hands on his hips and laughed that snobbish laugh of his, "I disagree! Small and helpless is the PERFECT look for you!"
As the pharaoh had a good laugh at Raptor's humiliation, the almost unconscious Talbain felt something begin to dig through the vines, which had inexplicably loosened their hold, and hold him close. The form was soft and warm, but it was the smell that the fighter recognized. He embraced Felicia with the last of his strength.
Felicia held his head close to her heart, "What have they done to you?" She closed her eyes and released a wailing mew from deep in her throat. The sonic effects of the note she held swept over Talbain's body, healing his wounds and restoring him to a state of health that was better than ever.
The Kung Fu Wolf Man stood gallantly, "Let's go be heroes Felicia."
Anakaris picked up Raptor by the base, holding him by the base and painfully plucking at his chords, "Behold! The ballad of Lord Raptor's demise!"
"How about singing your own tune 'Pharaoh'", a sharp kick knocked Anakaris asunder. Talbain and Felicia stood above him angrily as he slowly pulled himself up.
Raptor the Guitar was flung from the attack and crashed to the ground. As the pharaoh's concentration had been lost, he returned to his normal form on impact. Raptor looked around himself, and snapped his fingers, opening a swirling black vortex above him, "Time to exit stage left!" He jumped through, and it closed behind him.
The clouds in the sky began to fade, and the wind ceased howling. Anakaris backed away, raising hands in a surrendering manner, "I concede mortals. You have bested me for the time being, but I will return one day, stronger than ever." That said, the evil pharaoh raised himself into the air before either Talbain or Felicia could grab him and vanished in a flash of light like unto the sun.
Felicia put a hand on Talbain's shoulder, "You'll get your chance."
Talbain merely glanced skyward and growled.
DARKSTALKERS: THE SERIES WRITTEN BY REGIS A WELCH DARKSTALKERS © 2004 CAPCOM
-Man against monster. Monster against self. The story is as old as time. Living above us, below us, and among us, they assimilate themselves into our culture, and us into theirs. To the common man, they are simply known as night terrors, but to the initiated, they are the Darkstalkers-
EPISODE FIVE: GRUMPY DEAD MEN
Anakaris' eyes opened slowly. He was arraigned in his pharaonic adornments: the head mask, the golden tunic, and the arm and leg bracers, all in striped of gold and blue. The rest of his body was only garbed in his linen funeral wrappings.
All around him he saw small, crimson-colored flames floating in an endless darkness, having nothing to cast light upon save each other and himself. All of the flames are aligned in circular rows extending outward from him.
Anakaris fell to his knees and moaned with grief, "I have failed you, Gods of Egypt! May the scales of Ma'at show mercy on my soul!"
"Mercy iz somethin' ye have to earn in this world", a distorted, raspy echo resembling the voice of a Britannic man called through the darkness, causing the already shaken Anakaris to sit up and look about himself with keen eyes.
As his body began to tremble, a figure approaching from that darkness beyond gave him a reason to be afraid. The figure was tall, though by no means as tall as he, and gaunt as a skeleton. In fact, that is almost exactly what it appeared to be: a skeleton with spiky violet locks of hair adorning its' skull like unto devilish horns and just enough skin, decomposed muscle, and exposed tissue remains to fill it out. Regardless of the 'outer skin', a thin film of albino white over its mostly bony frame, it was clearly held together by supernatural animation. Its eyes, sunk deep in their sockets, were blood red.
Dependant on the beholder, the most obscene feature of this creature may have been its body, or perhaps it was the clothing with which it adorned itself. Semi-ragged plum trousers were held in place by a spiked, black leather belt at the waist and by heavy brown leather boots, over one of which a spiked black leather leg cuff was placed, at the bottom. Over the hands were fingerless gloves, the same color as the trousers, with three distinct metal studs on the back of each.
The ghoulish apparition strutted his way past the flames, letting his (on closer inspection, the figure was clearly intended to be a male) arms dangle wildly about him in a carefree meander. He seemed to be singing to himself in a strange tongue with an admittedly charismatic voice, but that was about the only trait he possessed which did not utterly turn the stomach upside down. He also seemed to be taking his sweet time before finally walking right up to edge of the inner circle of flames in which Anakaris stood.
Anakaris kept his eyes keen, "What is the meaning of this place, sorcerer?"
The ghastly vocalist tilted his head to the side, twisting his neck around completely upside-down like an owl, and then back to its intended position. A demonic smile crossed his face and he reached up, "Ohhhhh greeeeeat magiiiic POKE!" He slammed two disgusting bony fingers into the mummy's eyes and laughed, "Loser!"
Anakaris was angry now, "You putrid little jackal! Prepare to die!" He raised his own arms and shouted an echoing mummy's curse at the sarcastic ghoul.
The green mist escaped from under his golden mask, but as it began to surround the figure in question, a strange series of electric sparks went off, and the horrible creature laughed in a high-pitched, maniacal, even unearthly manner.
The fog had dissipated and the ghoul was unscathed. His red eyes met with Anakaris' now bloodshot orbs and flashed with the cold fire of the grave. Before the pharaoh could react, he found that his opponent had been raised up on a high platform along with an equally high podium in front of him.
The menacing creature took out a steel gavel and slammed it on the podium, making a ponderous thud, "The Court've Lord Raptor is in session. Presidin'? Who else but Yerz Truly, and the case is Hell versus The Big, Ugly Dude."
Anakaris foamed with rage, his fists clenching, "HOW DARE THEE! I AM THE SUN! I AM THE LORD OF THE LANDS ABOVE AND BELOW THE EARTH!"
The 'judge', now calling himself Lord Raptor, promptly turned around and lowered his pants, baring his bony buttocks to the defendant, "The Court moves that ye should blow it out yer arse. The defendant iz accused of causing a major upset in the Human World that cost many lives an' created massive paperwork for a certain angry judge, attempting to conquer the world, and otherwise bein' a naughty lil' jackass."
Lord Raptor leaned over the podium and grinned with those big, biting teeth of his, "How do ye plead, jackass." The accusation had been laid down.
Anakaris looked up at his unworthy prosecutor and decided that, if he was to be degraded in this manner, he would muster as much pride as possible, "I plead guilty."
Lord Raptor scratched his chin, "I see. Well, well, what're we gonna do with ye then? I could put yer soul in a purgatory file for the remainder of your sentence."
Anakaris gritted his teeth, "And how long is that may I inquire."
The judge laughed, "Forever."
Anakaris had about had enough of this, "Unreasonable!"
Raptor laughed harder, "Like ye've got any say in th' matter. I'm really not 'sposed t' do this, but I'm thinking yer too stiff a stick to break so easily an' I'm bored as, heh, Hell today anyway, so I'll play a little game with ye if yer up for it."
Anakaris narrowed his eyes, "Go to Hell."
The ghoulish Lord only grinned back to this before replying, "Where, praytell, do ye think we've been having this lil' courtroom soap? Tell ye what; I'll make ye a wager t' motivate ye to play: if ye win, ye'll get me guitar. It contains my most powerful magic and could revive ye completely as per yer plans."
Anakaris was all business, "And if you win?"
Raptor snickered, "I get to eat yer soul and take yer powers."
Anakaris crossed his arms, "What are your terms demon."
~
Talbain was walking home with a sack of groceries under each arm. The long walk to his inner city apartment with food he was used to just hunting and eating in cans, cartons, and other unnecessarily heavy containers reminded him vaguely of weight training as a kid.
He was a few blocks from his place when the dark clouds began to gather overhead. Rapid and threatening, he knew this was a severe storm at best and something to be far more cautious of at worst. The fighter set down his groceries and stood as straight and still as possible like a meerkat, nose searching for any strange aromas.
The clouds had merged now into a thick quilt of dark blue spanning the entire sky. Sparks of streak lightning coursed from cloud to cloud at an alarming rate.
~
Both alarmed and confused, Felicia was stumbling about in another part of the city. Her cat-like senses were a wreck and she could barely see straight. The smell of death and corruption in the air was strong, but there was an obscure charisma to it all that drew you in before repelling you. She was somewhere between the waves of all this.
Felicia had been heading to a meeting with her agent that very afternoon. Obviously this wasn't going to pan out, but she was more worried about her physical health than the health of her ego at this point. After a good fifteen minutes of this torture, she tripped onto her face involuntarily, losing consciousness for the time being.
~
Talbain wasn't looking so great himself. A cold sweat had enveloped his body and the sound of people falling around him with a yielding groan was making him sicker. He hated to see suffering, whether it was a darkstalker or a human. The thought was simply adverse to the nobler traits of his character.
He was currently dressed in a blue denim vest, blue jeans, and his favorite homemade brown leather boots, but all were soaked with his own perspiration as he struggled along, trying his best not to fall under the strange spell of the aura, which, even now, enveloped the entire city in its grip of terror and mayhem.
As he neared Town Square, the unthinkable happened: things got worse. The bodies of several of the towns inhabitants, some of which he had come to know himself in the time he had been here, lay strewn about, half-eaten by some monster.
Talbain walked forward at the remains of a familiar face: Mrs. Jargon. The poor woman, only in her thirties, was laid out like a rag doll, part of her face missing. Talbain knelt down, holding her up in his arms. A tear fell down his face and his teeth began to grit as his body began to quiver with rage, "Why? Why is this happening!!!"
Human hands did not set down the body of the woman. They were now the furry white claws of the beast. Talbain's long ears perked as he heard what he thought to be guitar playing in the distance. He bounded off in the music's general direction.
~
The normally quiet cemetery's peace had been disturbed by a fierce wind howling as a result of the storm overhead and a notable guitar shredding in the style of a great progressive metal live show. The normally green grass over the graves, which were now open, had turned to a colorless gray as if partially burned.
The propagator of this unlikely 'concert' was none other than Lord Raptor himself. He stood atop a mausoleum, guitar raised high in the air and not missing a beat. All around him stood the normally peaceful inhabitants of the city, now members of his captive living dead audience, contributing as vessels for his evil energies.
Talbain sprang over the stone wall of the cemetery, still in lupine hybrid form, and snarled, "I don't know who you are, but it's time for you to die."
Raptor cackled at this, lowering his head into a sneer, "Can't do that friend. Already dead 'm afraid, but have a seat!" Just then a root within the ground reached up and tripped Talbain, knocking him into the open grave behind him which was easily six feet deep with no visible coffin at the bottom, "Show's jes beginnin' baby."
Talbain tried to leap from the grave. It would have been relatively easy if the roots from the plants growing below the ground hadn't animated themselves and reached out, holding him fast in his front row seat to the eerie spectacle. He gnashed his pointed teeth and clawed, kicked, and threw himself about with all his might trying to escape, but the more he struggled, the more branch-like appendages seemed to encircle him.
Now literally earthbound, the werewolf was helpless to intervene in the events to follow. Raptor, on the other hand, was reveling in his 'coming out party'. The dead spectators stood around him silently moving back and forth, possibly numbering one hundred in all. The ghoul continued to grind upon his musical axe.
"Now then", Lord Raptor looked towards a particularly monumental family tomb, "Lez bring our friend up t' speed an' get this show on th' road!" The devilish creature spun his guitar over his head twice and brought it down, making an unearthly distorted squeal on the high bar with his nimble, albeit rotten, fingertips.
In response to the sonic wave generated by the guitar, the tomb began to thunder and crack. Finally, it exploded from within and a bright golden light shone outward from the spot where it had been. There stood Anakaris- Ra in full pharaonic garb.
Talbain's eyes widened, "Not you!" He struggled even harder, still held captive by the evil animated vines of the graveyard. It was to no avail.
Raptor leapt from his perch and landed roughly two meters from Anakaris-Ra. The two of them assumed their individual stances, that of the mummy being straightforward and militant while the ghoul's was cunning and loose.
Anakaris had no intentions of playing around, "Let us end this."
Raptor, on the other hand, wanted nothing BUT to play. He cackled maniacally and ran forward, head lowered like a bull, slamming into the flat-footed Anakaris with his full dead weight (give or take ninety pounds). Knocked from his feet, the evil pharaoh found himself upon his oversized back.
He looked up to the demonic Raptor with malice in his eyes, "DIE YOU IMPUDENT DOG!" His forearm reached out with unnatural elasticity based on the fact that he was capable of magically multiplying his own linen 'exoskeleton' and gripped Raptor by the throat, dragging him at a whopping sixty miles per hour both into and across the dirt of the necropolis, embedding him within it and retracting his arm.
Anakaris stood, his only regret that the golden mask prevented his face from showing how pleased he was with himself, "Buried as a commoner's corpse should be!"
From beneath the ground, a sick laughter erupted and an explosion of dark energy went off as the morbid maniac lunged forward from underneath the mummy pharaoh, a whole new weapon (namely, a razor sharp chainsaw known as Skull), and literally dismembered both of Anakaris' legs at the knees, sending him crashing to the ground.
His legs vanishing, Anakaris raised himself up, floating upon his waist tunic as if it were a magic carpet taking him higher and higher into the air. He slowly glided downward at his opponent, wrapping both arms around each other and extending them in a bizarre projectile golden cobra's head that hardened at the end.
The megaton, skull-breaking attack hit Raptor head on, throwing him back against the ground and several feet just plain back with enough force to carve a three foot indent in the ground below that trailed to where the ghoul's body lay.
Raptor muttered a curse under his breath, not for any magical effects, but simply because he felt like it, and slowly raised his somewhat broken body to its feet.
Anakaris was still in the air, barreling down at him. This time, a green vapor escaped from under his mask as before. The pharaoh grinned beneath his faceplate, "You may be immune to my magic in your realm, but here you are as vulnerable as I."
The mist surrounded a confused Raptor and POOF! In his place was a tiny, mandolin sized battle-axe guitar with his shrunken head where the top should be. "This iz SO not my look", Raptor the Guitar shouted in a midget voice.
Anakaris put his hands on his hips and laughed that snobbish laugh of his, "I disagree! Small and helpless is the PERFECT look for you!"
As the pharaoh had a good laugh at Raptor's humiliation, the almost unconscious Talbain felt something begin to dig through the vines, which had inexplicably loosened their hold, and hold him close. The form was soft and warm, but it was the smell that the fighter recognized. He embraced Felicia with the last of his strength.
Felicia held his head close to her heart, "What have they done to you?" She closed her eyes and released a wailing mew from deep in her throat. The sonic effects of the note she held swept over Talbain's body, healing his wounds and restoring him to a state of health that was better than ever.
The Kung Fu Wolf Man stood gallantly, "Let's go be heroes Felicia."
Anakaris picked up Raptor by the base, holding him by the base and painfully plucking at his chords, "Behold! The ballad of Lord Raptor's demise!"
"How about singing your own tune 'Pharaoh'", a sharp kick knocked Anakaris asunder. Talbain and Felicia stood above him angrily as he slowly pulled himself up.
Raptor the Guitar was flung from the attack and crashed to the ground. As the pharaoh's concentration had been lost, he returned to his normal form on impact. Raptor looked around himself, and snapped his fingers, opening a swirling black vortex above him, "Time to exit stage left!" He jumped through, and it closed behind him.
The clouds in the sky began to fade, and the wind ceased howling. Anakaris backed away, raising hands in a surrendering manner, "I concede mortals. You have bested me for the time being, but I will return one day, stronger than ever." That said, the evil pharaoh raised himself into the air before either Talbain or Felicia could grab him and vanished in a flash of light like unto the sun.
Felicia put a hand on Talbain's shoulder, "You'll get your chance."
Talbain merely glanced skyward and growled.
DARKSTALKERS: THE SERIES WRITTEN BY REGIS A WELCH DARKSTALKERS © 2004 CAPCOM