Blood

Chapter 5: Fathers and Sons

By Fool's Gold

Disclaimer: Garou Densetsu (Fatal Fury) and all related characters are the property of SNK-Playmore. No profit has been made from this fic.


The basement was utterly silent, save for the slow sounds of a man's shallow breathing. And in the void, those sounds were the only hints that any living soul hid within the darkness...

...if you can consider him alive, Kain thought, making his way down the stairs carefully. Only his hand on the rusty metal banister kept him from stumbling blindly down into the pitch-black unknown.

His initial impression of the man was that he was nothing but a freak; in this stagnant town where people merely existed instead of living, this murderer was the most extreme of them all – a creature that straddled the void between life and death. The foul being's very existence was an insult to Kain's nature.

And yet, such beasts still had their purposes. The Reaper would have his fair share of work before the end.

His foot touched the bare concrete floor, and he called out into the darkness.

"Come out where I can see you." There was an iron control in Kain's voice; lesser men would have fled by now, not caring to remain in Death's lair. But Second Southtown's kingpin of crime knew that he was the master here.

This fool seeks blood as an end, not a means. What can he hope to achieve? Death holds only a shadow of might... and that, Kain decided, was what kept this man locked in the shadows, separating the two of them beyond reconciliation. True power lay in life and change – he himself would bring it to this town, and abominations such as this one would no longer have their place here.

But until then...

From out of the darkness, a gaunt figure stalked menacingly into the dim light from the open door. And from behind strands of limp, dishevelled red hair, a pair of sinister black eyes came to rest silently upon the crimelord.

He said not a word; his eyes told everything, boring into Kain with a soulless defiance as he stood there. And Kain matched his stare with a stark diffidence, unaffected in the least.

"I want you to deliver a message for me."

The thin man shifted slightly, and Kain could sense the hostility in every minute movement that he made. He watched the killer's hands clench, the pale fingers turning bone-white against the empty blackness of the dank basement – an act of futility. It was almost pathetic, watching this cadaver cling on to its claim to life. And what kind of life was it, wasted in the pursuit of death as it was?

And now, the corpselike figure who stood before him silently challenged his authority, an insolent glare staring out in barely-controlled resentment. Kain's thoughts rebelled at the thought of having to use such a foul creature – a part of him cried out, telling him to finish the deed that the police had been too incompetent to finish.

But in the end, practicality won out. The reckless man who had attacked his property needed to be put in his place; there was no way that Kain could have allowed his authority to be challenged, and certainly not in his town. A message needed to be delivered, to show that the massacre had been acknowledged – and also to let him know that any further assaults would not be tolerated. The rest would be left for Goto to deal with – his family affairs were his own business.

The reply would have to be writ large in order to get the subject's attention... and it would have to be returned in kind, a waste of life that Kain found rather distasteful.

After all, the murderer had his uses.

"Do it. You owe me your... existence." Kain picked his words carefully, not deigning to call it 'life'. The insult did not go unnoticed: the man stepped forward, his pale frame seeming to glow with a sickly aura; Kain easily recognised it as an unnatural hunger... a lust for slaughter.

"...you promised me a hunt."

The sibilant hiss of the man's words slipped out through bloodless lips, and a deathly chill settled on the nape of Kain's neck. But his reply was equally cool, his response measured; it was easy to satisfy the murderer's desires as long as they furthered his plans.

"And a hunt you shall have, Freeman. I believe this job will whet your appetite..."

And as Kain elaborated on the details, a demented rictus began to form on the killer's lips.


"Hello? Earth to Jae, do you copy?"

Dong Hwan stretched his hand over his outraged brother's shoulder and waved violently, vainly trying to attract his attention. It proved futile. When Jae Hoon was in one of his moods of "righteous rage", as Dong Hwan flippantly termed them, there was no stopping him – if injustice caught his eye, he was always determined to pursue it to the end, and no amount of persuasion could bring him out of that mood. In that respect, everyone agreed, he was almost a carbon copy of his father.

Well, that's one part of the Kim heritage I'm glad not to have inherited, Dong Hwan thought in annoyance. Idly, he rubbed his fingers together, a look of sheer boredom on his face.

Slowly, the buzz of static began to invade the room, a low hum that gradually displaced the silence which had previously filled the room. Jae Hoon failed to notice it, his angry eyes fixed on the table before him, the furious expression remaining fixed on his face as though it had been branded on with a hot iron...

Dong Hwan gave a resigned sigh and jabbed his charged fingers into his brother's side, eliciting far more than a startled yelp.

The effect, he noted, was electric.

"What was that for?" groaned Jae Hoon from his sprawled position on the living room floor.

"I said, 'Where are Mom and Dad?'"

"Oh." There was a pained grunt as he righted himself back into a standing position; his voice still bore more than a hint of anger as he replied sullenly, "They're on the other side of town. Physiotherapy follow-up."

"That wasn't so hard, was it? Sheesh, what's eating you?" Dong Hwan peered over his brother's shoulder, trying to figure out what exactly had made him so furious.

The answer was obvious. Jae Hoon had opened the newspapers to a familiar-looking article; Dong Hwan had seen it that morning also, but he'd paid it no heed. The header read starkly: Man found dead in alley.

The article was pretty matter-of-fact, as far as Dong Hwan could see, and hardly worth getting all worked up over. The man, a security guard working at one of Kain's warehouses, had been found dead in an alley the previous day with a broken neck and deep knife wounds to his back. Police believed that the victim had been the target of a botched-up robbery, judging from the way he had been stripped of all his valuables before being dumped in the alleyway.

Dong Hwan stared at the article blankly, wondering why his brother had worked himself into such a rage. Sure, the guy's death was regrettable, but there simply wasn't any point in thinking too much about it. It wasn't as though they could do anything for him now.

"Oh. Whatever."

Jae Hoon whirled around violently, causing Dong Hwan to jump back in surprise. His brother's eyes blazed in rage as they shot a glare at him; he stared back with a perplexed look on his face, wondering if he'd said something wrong this time...

"What did you say?"

He had.


The thug known as Switchblade wandered through the maze of alleys in a sullen rage, handling the weapon for which he had been named. And it only served to make him even more irritated.

With his other hand, he rubbed the back of his neck in irritation, massaging the ugly bruise that had formed when he'd slammed into the wall. It hurt, of course. But what really frustrated him was the way in which five of them – five, he noted in disbelief – had been crushed so easily by a mere girl. The humiliation had been too much to live down.

The others had run away to lick their wounds... for all he knew and cared, they were probably still groaning about the pain in some basement somewhere. But he wasn't one to keep still; no, there was an anger building up inside him that only worked itself up with every moment, and not even the pain of his throbbing head could keep him down.

And so, Switchblade stalked the alleys of the Korean district in an intense rage, looking for something – or someone – to vent his spleen on.

His wish was fulfilled quickly enough. A heap of rags and trash in the corner of the dark alley caught his eye; he saw the faint, rustling movements from within the pile – probably some cat, he thought, but curiosity got the better of him.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness within the cul-de-sac, he faintly made out the figure of a man, his scrawny figure covered by a ragged assortment of cloth and old newspaper. Aside from the slight rise and fall of this "blanket", there was no other apparent movement from the vagrant – for all he knew, the man could have been lying there for several days.

The gooks wouldn't miss him.

A sadistic smile formed on Switchblade's lips as he took another step towards the inert figure. He nudged the body with his toe; there was no response. And now his foot drew back as he prepared, emboldened by the lack of resistance, for another kick...

A claw shot out from under the pile, sending him crashing jaw-first to the pavement. His world exploded; the intense burst of pain that shot through his skull almost knocked him senseless. Instead, he found his jaw flopping about uselessly even as he attempted to cry out in pain – it was a good moment before he realised that it had been dislocated from the impact.

That fact was soon driven into his pain-hazed mind as a white hand closed about his mouth, wrenching his jaw into an even more awkward angle. And he was aware of an almost ecstatic voice hissing into his ear, a perverse pleasure evident in the speaker's voice that sent panic into every fibre of his body.

"Don't worry... you can do all the screaming you want... later."

And as he lay sprawled on the ground, struggling futilely against his fate, he felt the touch of cold talons against his back, sharper than any blade he had ever known.


"...the problem with you, Dong Hwan, is that you just don't care!"

The target of Jae Hoon's rant simply yawned, having ignored most of the contents of the tirade for the last five minutes. He'd caught some snatches of it, of course – mainly the oft-repeated "justice", "defending the innocent", and "evil running loose in the streets" – and that was when he'd determined that Jae Hoon certainly took after their father when it came to giving longwinded speeches. He'd heard them all already.

It was just as well. For most of his life, he'd been working on finding a proper comeback to his father's lectures – I may be lazy, but I certainly wouldn't take this lying down – and until recently, he thought he'd finally worked it out.

Then Freeman had struck.

It had been a year of agony for them: their mother had nearly gone into a nervous breakdown trying to cope with the loss, and even he would have confessed to spates of depression, however unlikely it would have appeared to others. And after their father had returned from his untimely disappearance, Dong Hwan had held his peace. It simply wasn't right to subject his family to more heartbreak, and a tacit understanding had developed between father and son: Kim Kaphwan would tone down on his lectures, and as a concession on his own part, Dong Hwan would try to curb some of the excesses that distressed his parents so.

That hadn't stopped Jae Hoon from taking his father's place – which was alright with Dong Hwan. After all, brothers were fair game. And so, he yawned insolently in his brother's face as he retorted, "And you, little brother, care too much."

The words stung as painfully as a slap to the face. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean, Jae, is that it's simply not worth it to run around this entire town smiting the ungodly." The elder brother rubbed his eyes deliberately, annoying Jae Hoon even further. "Firstly, there's no point getting yourself so worked up over something that can't be undone..."

"...but the killers will strike again!"

"Then leave it to the police! Southtown's finest are probably more than capable of dealing with these things... and anyway, what else can you do? You're just one person."

"But one person can make a difference," Jae Hoon replied self-righteously.

"Sure. And knowing you, you'd make a difference all right... the question is, what kind of difference? It's one thing to defend people you see getting victimised; it's another thing to get out on the streets and hunt down criminals like some caped crusader. Who knows, one day Mac the Knife might just sue you for aggravated assault." Dong Hwan snickered at the thought, an action which definitely annoyed the younger brother. "There's no point in dashing around and interfering with the due process of law. The police are paid for this kind of work, you know."

The look on Jae Hoon's face reflected a temper that was well beyond simple frustration: while he simply could not fathom the idea of simply ignoring the evil that had been done, his brother's arguments did seem to make sense. And the conflict between ideals and reality began to eat away at his perceptions of life in Southtown, leaving a lingering doubt that truly irritated him.

"Damn you, Dong Hwan!" he shouted in exasperation; he was well and truly angered by now, and didn't attempt to hide it. "If everyone in this town thought the way you did, where would we be by now?"

It was time for the clincher, Dong Hwan decided.

"Actually, Jae, if you'd look around town these days... everyone does."


His work completed, the murderer drew back for a moment to admire his masterpiece. At his feet lay his latest work, still in its death throes, flopping around aimlessly in a final desperate effort to cheat death.

He bent over and cradled the man's chin, a perverse expression of his affair with death, and pushed his jaw back into place with a sickening 'click'.

"Sing for me."

And as he stabbed his hand into Switchblade's chest, the gangster's last breath blossomed into a soul-rending scream.


The cry split the tense atmosphere wide open, completely disrupting Jae Hoon's planned rebuttal. Without a second thought, he had flung the door open and rushed out into the night – obviously to trace the sound to its source, in spite of Dong Hwan's misgivings.

"And he calls me a hothead?" Still, he followed his brother out of the door, mostly out of curiosity, but there was a nagging feeling in his mind that simply wouldn't go away. Must be my vestigial sense of responsibility, he thought, slowly walking down the road in the path that his brother had taken.

He was wrong.

Jae Hoon had abruptly stopped at the entrance of a deserted alley. As Dong Hwan approached, he noticed that his brother's face had turned pallid; and if there was one thing that Jae Hoon was not, it would have been 'easily shaken'. Something was amiss.

"What..." He walked up to his brother's side, being careful not to step in the dark puddle that had formed at the alley's mouth...

...and froze.

"Shit." It was all he could do to avoid gagging as he felt his insides lurch up from within him, threatening to spill from his mouth at any moment. He looked at his brother, who stared back with a horror that not even the years of discipline could have controlled. Neither of them needed to voice the thought that they shared: they had seen this before, and very recently too.

"Freeze!"

They whirled around simultaneously to face the speaker, a policeman – fresh out of training school, judging from the nervous way he pointed his gun at them. But in doing so, they revealed just what exactly lay in the alley...

The pistol clattered to the ground, and the sound of violent retching was heard over the phone call that Jae Hoon hastily made.


An assassin watched the empty streets below him, silently contemptuous of all he surveyed.

Three years of his life had passed – and there was no regaining them. He had traded off the vestigial remnants of his scruples, exchanging them for the strength of hatred and fury, and it was now time to settle the score with the man who had humiliated him at the Maximum Mayhem tournament... the very same man who had humiliated him all his life.

It had been no challenge for him to find his father; that day three years ago, the old man had thrown in his lot with the effeminate self-styled ruler of Second Southtown. What was his father thinking? Did the old fool really buy into Kain's empty promises, ones which he had no intention of fulfilling?

He snorted, dismissing the questions which had entered his thoughts. It was time to focus on the revenge he sought, and with the 'calling card' that he had left at the warehouse, the first shot had been fired in his war against his father. Now all he needed to do was to wait for the reply...

The scream reached his ears from one of the many alleys that he surveyed from his vantage point; it was clearly that of a man in his death throes. He stared into the dark network below and faintly made out a fleeing figure: obviously, the perpetrator was still in the vicinity.

Well, this is interesting.

He leapt off the edge of the building in one fluid movement, landing on the ground in perfect silence, and began to stalk the shadow. With luck, one killer would lead him to another.


The murderer slunk away into the network of alleys, struggling against his desire to continue the killing. The two Koreans had made such easy targets – and he felt a twisted sense of loss at not having perfectly fulfilled his desires. He had failed to kill Kim Kaphwan once: when the time came, he would finally make a masterpiece of his family. First the father, then the sons...

Lost as he was in his demented thoughts, he failed to see the attack that was suddenly launched at him from out of the darkness. From out of nowhere, a fist rocketed straight into his torso, slamming him backwards into the wall.

"Looking for me?"

He recognised that voice, a distant, hazy memory from the days of the tournament, and instantly found consolation.

It was a wonderful sensation to feel the hatred and the vengeful spirit that emanated from the man; he relished the sensation, drawing it in as though it was life-sustaining air. Here, he knew, was another who appreciated the art of killing. In gleeful anticipation, he leapt up, ready for a duel on the edge of life and death – his home ground.

He struck out with his bloodstained fingers, slashing at his assailant. But his claws failed to score a hit; his assailant had already dodged the strike and was already in the air, ready to descend with a diving kick. Freeman saw it coming and slid aside...

"Too slow."

Even as he moved, he saw Gato's path change in mid-air. For all his efforts, he might as well have tried to dodge a guided missile: the foot crashed directly into his skull, sending him sliding across the ground in a perverted mixture of pleasure and pain.

He came to a stop at the end of the alleyway, and an undeniable instinct forced him back onto staggering feet. For Freeman, there was a call that drove him on to fight, and that call was death – either the opponent's...

...or his own.


Gato drew back his fist, disgusted with himself. The pathetic fool was annoyingly hard to kill... Not that it mattered anyway. After this strike, things would be settled. He drew his fist back, ready to deliver the killing blow.

"Get out of here, scumbag. This is my business now."

A voice called out from on high as he lunged forwards, and a dark figure plummeted from the rooftops, intercepting the attack with outstretched hands. And Gato suddenly found himself recoiling, knocked backwards by a simple shift of the interloper's weight even as the first shadow melted away reluctantly.

That move gave the intruder's identity away, and there was no longer any doubt in Gato's mind as to who this mysterious man was. His gamble had paid off.

"Well done, son." Goto Futaba's voice was coldly derisive in his appraisal. "I see you've decided to move into a better line of work... but trash disposal doesn't suit anyone bearing the Futaba name."

"Enough prattle, old man," came Gato's retort. "This ends tonight."

"Obviously, you've wasted three years neglecting your brain." Goto jabbed a finger back towards the street, where the police were beginning to cordon off the area. "It'll have to wait, you foolish boy."

His father's taunts were getting on his nerves, but Gato realised the truth in his words: it would be suicidal to start a fight here and now, with the police so close by. But there were still too many questions left unanswered, and they burned in his mind as he fought the urge to attack.

"What business do you have with Kain?" he growled, cursing his inability to act decisively.

"I could ask the same of you, considering the way you slaughtered his men," replied Goto, uncaringly, "but I think that's beside the point. What I do is my business – and you should stay out of it. Speaking of which... what are you here for?" He folded his hands behind his back, almost daring his son to attack him by this act of arrogant complacency. "Are you back for a second shot at the job you screwed up three years ago... or is it something else?"

Gato grunted, almost in reluctant assent. "For that day in China... and everything else since then." The younger man's voice was filled with a festering rage, turned bitter by the years of shame and humiliation that had passed.

Goto's voice, on the other hand, came out mockingly. "Good. And I have some matters to settle over the way you have disgraced my name." He laughed evilly as his son's eyes focused on him in anger. "But until then... tough luck. We'll settle this later."

He turned his back on Gato, preparing to leave, but a final question stopped him in his tracks.

"Does she know?"

The words came out almost casually, but the import behind them was more than enough to make Goto turn back around. He faced his son, his eyes betraying no hint of emotion whatsoever. But Gato sensed his discomfort.

"How much does she know about us?" he asked again, driving his point home.

Goto shrugged. "Does it matter? As far as she's concerned, I'm dead. You, on the other hand..." The statement ended unfinished; each man knew exactly what the other was talking about, and there was no need for elaboration between the two of them.

It was some surprise to Goto, then, when his son shot back, "You should be worried, old man. She's back in town. And would you risk having the truth told to your beloved daughter?"

A troubled frown appeared on Goto's face for a split second, a rare show of emotion on his part; clearly, the news was disturbing. And his response was carefully neutral: "The same applies to you too, Gato. I'm not the only one who stands to lose."

"Of course." The anger in Gato's expression had been replaced by a smirk as he watched his father's discomfort. "So... when will you settle this? Or will you wait until I tell her everything?"

"Will she listen to you?"

With that last accusation, Goto turned swiftly and ascended to the rooftops before his son had a chance to answer. Gato did not bother chasing his father; he knew that any attempt to press the matter would be futile. The fight would have to wait.

Instead, he stared into the darkness until the sound of sirens reached his ears, and then made his own escape.


"We got here as quickly as we could when we heard the news," Kim mumbled to Sergeant Rian, both of them still shocked by the night's events. Myun didn't say a word as she ran straight to her sons, flinging her arms around them as her tears flowed in relief.

"Don't worry, we're fine," Dong Hwan remarked, trying to maintain the relaxed composure that had always been his trademark. But the tension that pervaded the entire police station would not go away – not after the night's gruesome discovery.

Jae Hoon put an arm around his weeping mother in silence, shaken to the core by what he had seen. And even as he tried to come to grips with the fact that a man had just been brutally tortured and murdered in their quiet neighbourhood, his analytical side began to consider two possibilities.

The man who had died the other day had been slashed in the back, while the body they had seen was cruelly mutilated – the most striking wounds having been on the gangster's back. Therefore, it was possible that the two men had been killed by the same person.

The conclusion was disturbing: it implied that a serial killer was now stalking Second Southtown, preying on anyone he or she met and slaughtering people without mercy. Jae Hoon clenched his fist, his blood boiling in anger. It fell to someone to protect the innocent, whether or not the people of Southtown cared or not. And he would fulfil that duty.

But at the same time, the other possibility reared its head. And that scenario, however remote, suggested that the night's carnage was the work of a hand which he had seen before... a ghastly white hand, as cold as the dead.

It was impossible. As far as they knew, Freeman was dead. And that was the trouble.

Jae Hoon would never forget the night when they had wheeled his father's body out from the abandoned building, bloodied, battered and mutilated beyond recognition. And the sight would remain etched in his memory as long as he lived: it was an image that he thought he would never see again... but he had seen it tonight.

Dead men didn't just get up and walk after having been shot by a sniper bullet. But Jae Hoon turned to look at his father, alive – in spite of a year's terrible indications to the contrary – and a pang of terror struck his heart.

If even murder victims could survive... then all bets were off when it came to the murderer. And the worried face of Kevin Rian only gave strength to Jae Hoon's fears.


Notes:

Apologies to all readers for the delay and general haphazardness of this chapter... but real life decided to rear its ugly head halfway through. Amendments may be made to this chapter in the near future, if the readers will kindly point out anything that needs fixing.

Yes, there still isn't any indication about what happened in China, but I think you people can guess. Not like it matters anyway. More details about the original event will appear in later chapters.

I never realised how closely "Goto" and "Gato" matched – "Goto" was a name I picked out of a Tom Clancy novel, and it proved to be my undoing during the confrontation scene. I'll probably cook up some back story about why the two are so similar, but until then, I'll just leave you all with the information that in Garou: MOTW, Gato's name is written in Kanji (unlike Hotaru's), and that the two characters that make up his name are "fang" (or "tooth"), and "knife". For all we know, it could even be a pseudonym... but the likelihood of that is open to debate.