Chapter 10: Revelation

Disclaimer (Poor me! Woe is me! Save me! Help! Please mummy no! I don't wanna write another disclaimer!.): I, Grey Rayne, do not own anything, whether it be items, characters, place names or anything within The King of Fighter's universe. I do own a few miscellaneous characters within this story, but they may be used freely by all.

King of Fighters is a trademark of SNK Playmore.

The throne room was quiet. The terrible quietness that can only be made by someone who wasn't making any noise. This person was sitting on the throne and was plotting, as always. He stared at his knees mostly, but briefly glanced at the big double doors. After a while he grinned.

"How long have you been here?" He said.

A figure stepped out of the shadows behind the throne and moved to his side without making a noise.

"Not long, my master." The ninja said without looking at him. Konrad's grin disappeared.

"I'm sure I sent you after the street rat..." He said mirthlessly. She was silent for a while.

"For a 'street rat,' he's very perceptive. Although his manners were very fitting." She said, staring away into the shadows around the room.

There was silence for a time, and she turned her head to look at him.

There was a question hanging in the air which she didn't want to ask. That throne was Krizalid's, and only Krizalid's. Konrad could get into a lot of trouble if he was found sitting in it. He didn't seem to care though, like he didn't care about most things. A few years administering lethal injections for death row prisoners could do that to people, if they were the wrong sort for the job. He had moved on after that to become a business consultant. One of Krizalid's aide's had discovered him, 'a cold man with enormous potential and a background in law enforcement,' it didn't sound appealing to Krizalid until he actually met the man.

"Lord Krizalid isn't himself, have you noticed?" Konrad said monotonously. "That girl has clouded his judgement. Yesterday he was talking about helping people!" He spat the words as if they were something vile. Alla's eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

"It doesn't sound that bad." she said, folding her arms. He muttered something under his breath. Alla thought she heard the word 'plan' in there, she had good hearing.

"What are you planning, sir?" She asked before she could stop herself. Konrad didn't flinch, but a small smile curled his lips, a fake grin of course.

"Nothing gets past you, does it Alla?" He said, leaning back in his chair. "Once I'm in power you will be at my side, and that rot, Carrik, can be left to wash up on a beach somewhere."

Alla expected him to laugh maniacally, but he was too reserved for that, although she got the impression that, inside his head, he was laughing his ass off.

Another figure stepped out of the shadows behind them and moved beside Alla. Konrad stood up quickly, but a thin hand grabbed him around the throat with surprising speed and pulled him back into the chair. The face of Carrik, grinning terribly, appeared in the corner of Konrad's vision. Alla watched but didn't interfere.

"That's what your planning, is it!" Carrik hissed, practically in his ear. "You're gonna knock off old Krizalid and take his spot. I always knew you was a wrong-un, too much crap goes through your head to be reliable."

Konrad's face remained impassive, but Carrik caught the quick, angry glare he sent in Alla's direction.

Apparently she saw it as well.

"Please try to understand, master." She said. "When you got that tattoo on your arm, the same one as me and everyone else, you swore allegiance to Lord Krizalid. For life."

Konrad stared at her, then turned his glare at Carrik. Much to their surprise his face broke slowly into a grin, there was no humour in it.

His foot came up and pushed Carrik, it would be quite an ineffective blow, but the few steps behind Carrik made him stumble backwards awkwardly. Konrad leapt over the falling figure and made a dash towards the exit. Alla knew that if she let him go it would be trouble, but her hands were already instinctively reaching for one of her throwing stars. There are three kinds of creatures who will react instinctively when someone runs away from them; dogs, policemen and assassins. She brought here arm back. The throwing star landed straight and true in the back of Konrad's neck, his rapid dash didn't stop, but he veered sideways, staggering, and ran into the wall beside the door. He slid down it slowly and lay still.

Carrik picked himself up with a few muttered curses. He stared firstly at the still figure lying in the shadows and then turned slowly to Alla.

"Ya killed 'im!" He said, with exaggerated shock.

"Was that wrong?"

"Yeah, I wanted to rough him up a bit first." He pulled a cigar which had been snapped in two out of his pocket and stuffed one part between his teeth. She gave him another disgusted look. Carrik struck a match on his own stubbly chin and held it in front of the cigar, but then his eyes narrowed. He pulled the cigar from between his teeth.

"That star-thingy killed him, right?" He said, without turning.

"Yes. Or at least paralysed him." Alla said, still glaring at him. He shook the match out.

"Where's his body gone?"

Alla followed his gaze to where Konrad, up until now, had been. There was a large amount of blood on the floor and a smear down the wall but the body had disappeared. Alla's mouth opened and closed a few times.

"That's impossible!" She hissed.

A dark figure lurched through the silent halls with surprising speed. The soul was still slowly filing out into the empty shell of the body, completely invisible to human eyes but to those of a supernatural disposition it would have been a suggestion of a shape in the air, like water draining down a plug. In life, Konrad had dabbled with forbidden dark arts. There was always a price for dabbling in the blackest arts, but he hadn't cared and he had met face-to-face with a demon of terrible power. He had made a deal with it and the demon had used powerful magic to alter the Orochi spell used to summon the humans known as Rugal and Vice, in return Konrad would offer up his physical body, in death, to the demon lord whom he had summoned. The demon stretched a pale human arm as it sprung to life.

The eye sockets of the figure moving through the shadows were illuminated with a fiery red glow, it's deathly pale face outlined red by the sheer brightness of its eyes. It knew what it had to do, it wasn't interested in political power or control, unlike Konrad, it was interested in its own survival in the mortal realm. To do this it would need greater strength. It knew where to get it. Arms flailed in the gloom and burst through the huge iron doors of the underground facility as if they were as insubstantial as a house of cards. The fiery glow disappeared into the night...

"KONRAD ISTEN?"

Konrad looked up from the blackness about him, hearing his full name spoken by anyone after so much time gave him a start. Reality hit him as he looked up at the hooded figure looming over him.

"Ah..." he said.

"QUITE RIGHT." Said Death.

Konrad looked about himself, the darkness of this place made the great hall in the facility look like a field on a glorious summer day.

"Out of curiosity..." He said. "Which way am I going. Up or Down?"

Death slowly reached into his robes and pulled out a piece of ancient-looking parchment. He examined it for some time.

"YOU APPEAR TO BE GOING NEITHER, FOR NOW." he said, folding the paper and pushing it back into his robes. He stood aside and behind him a rift in space slowly opened, crackling with electricity and flames as it did so. The light coming from it was purple...

"THIS WAY, PLEASE."

K' regarded himself in the mirror, a frown forming on his face. Then he slipped on his sunglasses, zipped up his leather shirt and stretched. He had to be prepared for a fight, who knows what kind of goons this secret organisation had. At least he wouldn't be fighting alone. He had Kyo, Rugal, Vice, Adelheid Bernstein, King and, technically, Rose Bernstein on his side. No-one in their right mind would want to face all of them. He met his own gaze again in the mirror and sighed heavily. The enemy had the advantage though; they had Whip.

King stood outside La Illusion, waiting for everyone else to come out so she could lock up. She had left the spare key with Elizabeth, just in case something happened. Rugal was leaning against the wall not far from her, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He had taken quite a liking to his new ringmasters coat, he said it 'felt right' when he wore it. King felt like she should try to start a conversation as the silence between them lengthened. She never got the chance, as Adelheid and Rose emerged from La Illusion, followed closely by Kyo then Vice and finally K'.

"It's nearly midnight, we should get going now." K' said. He didn't wait for their replies, but started walking in the direction he remembered the meeting place to be. It was a cold night and every breath he took came out as steam. Fog was beginning to settle also and he highly expected that this 'meeting' was going to be more trouble than it sounded. He heard the others fall into step behind him, followed shortly after by King and Rugal, who had watched out for 'baddies,' as he called them, whilst King locked up.

"I hope everyone's ready, we don't know what to expect." Kyo commented.

"I do not even know why we had to come along. It is unbearably cold out here!" Whined Rose, although she was wearing a mink coat that only left her eyes and the top of her head visible to the world.

"Father wishes to help these ladies and gentlemen in their endeavours, dear sister." Adel said without looking around. Rose didn't reply, but wordlessly placed her arm in Adel's, he didn't resist.

Vice walked close beside Rugal, who was walking along solemnly behind everyone else. She watched Adel and Rose, they were such a strange couple, Rose was rash as far as Vice could tell and Adel was reserved and polite to a fault. Rose seemed to have some kind of infatuation with Adelheid, but once you realised that he was the only family she had known since her father had died, Vice could understand it a little easier, otherwise it was kind of creepy.

"Nice boy you have there." She said out of the corner of her mouth to Rugal. He nodded, and Vice realised he was watching them also. "After all this is over, you can go back with them and maybe have a proper family. Who knows? You may even get your memory back."

"I'd rather not get my memory back, at least not all of it." He added. Vice nodded glumly. "What are you going to do, after all of this is over?" Rugal enquired.

The question hung in the air, and Vice realised that she hadn't thought about it. She knew that she was of Orochi bloodline, whatever that meant, but other than that what did she know about herself? She only had a first name, and no-one seemed to know much about her, even Adel couldn't scrounge up much info, only the few scraps that she already knew. The name Goenitz didn't ring a bell when he said it to her, but he had explained that Goenitz was some kind of Orochi king, or something. Her hopes of tracking this Goenitz and beating information out of him had been squashed when Rose had said, with uncanny politeness for her, 'yes, but he's dead, isn't he?' Adel had nodded.

Rugal was still waiting patiently for a reply.

"I...don't know..." She muttered.

"If you like." He said. "You could, perhaps, come with... me...?" She smiled up at him.

"That would be nice, but I don't know what your children will say."

He beamed at her, there was a trace of evilness in it.

"I'm sure I can persuade them." He said. Vice giggled slightly. She hooked her arm in his, much like Rose had done with Adel, and they plodded on through the cold night, unaware of what awaited them.

Whip looked around to make sure that no-one was around. Although it was getting close to midnight and extremely foggy she felt acutely embarrassed. She had said that she was cold and Krizalid had offered her his white-trimmed coat. It was far to big for her and the shoulder-plumes were bigger than her head, in the gloom she probably looked like a rather short three-headed monster.

Krizalid stood close-by, looking warm and toasty in his own coat. No-one else had been ordered to come with them, this was something that they had to do alone.

"It's almost midnight." He said absently, staring across the empty parking lot, no-one would leave a car in a place like this after dark, there were no security cameras; it was a perfect place for shifty business.

A shadow moved in the stillness of the night and they tensed. A cat meowed and scurried by. They untensed. But suddenly more shadows, varying in size, appeared in the gloom.

"This is it. Are you nervous?" Krizalid asked her. Whip gave him a surprised look.

"I guess." She conceded, although she was more excited than nervous. Although K' could be as gloomy and friendly as a broom closet at times, she hadn't realised how much she would miss him until he was gone.

K' appeared first out of the gloom, and saw Whip. She was running towards him and slipping out of an overly large coat. All other details about what was around her were ignored. She wasn't tied up and she looked in good health. She cannoned into his chest and wrapped her arms around him tightly. K' found himself returning the hug, and meaning it, without having to consult his anti-social half first.

Krizalid's heart sunk despite himself as he saw Whip and K' embrace, but that was what he wanted, wasn't it? The reason he had come back, to sort out the lives of people to whom he had caused grief? He noticed that, despite the heart warming reunion, everyone else was staring at him. Kyo stepped forward and stood a few feet in front of him.

"Long time no see." Krizalid said jovially. Kyo remained impassive. "Don't tell me you've forgotten me?" Krizalid went on, with a mock expression of hurt.

"How did you survive?" Kyo demanded. Krizalid continued grinning, but the look in his eyes took on a haunted look.

"I didn't." He said forlornly. "You've got to give NESTS some credit though, when it comes to cloning and such-like." He waved his arms. "They made a nice, new body and I happened to find my way into that empty shell. Possession is two 5th's of the law, Kyo Kusanagi." He grinned.

Kyo raised his arm, flame spouting at his fingertips, ready to wipe that mocking smile off Krizalid's face for good. But suddenly Whip appeared between them, arms outstretched and facing Kyo.

"Please, don't harm Krizalid. He doesn't mean anything by it." She said. Kyo stared at her in surprise. He held his arm up, unsure of what to do. K's hand took his wrist and lowered it.

"Let's hear what he has to say." K' said. Kyo looked at him for a moment, then turned his gaze to Whip, who gave him an encouraging grin, then Krizalid, who's face was suddenly sad for some reason.

Kyo's hand closed and the flame flickered for a moment before dying.

"Fine. Let's hear what he has to say." He said testily.

Rose stamped forward, shaking as if she was made of jelly, and rubbed her arms to try and keep warm.

"All of this tête-à-tête is interesting and all that, but may we please continue it somewhere warmer!" She hissed.

"Fine, let's go back to-"

"You are not going anywhere..." A voice, echoing with strange harmonics, boomed. It sounded as if it had come from above them.

A freak gust of wind blew them all over...