DARKSTALKERS: VAMPIRE HUNTER
Chapter One: Seven Years Hence
Fanfiction by Louis the Rogue
(Based on original story by Capcom Inc.)
The presence of the dark has always been strong; some say, as strong as that of the light. And yet, what when a light breeds darkness too?
This bizarre question became a stunning reality early in the Earth year 1990. Astronomers were expectedly the first to notice the sudden appearance of a new star in the sky. Barely a month afterward, the reports began filing in; an inexplicable increase in darkstalker attacks began to sweep the globe, seizing it with a fear unknown since the old days when mankind was a more superstitious lot and witch hunts were common.
As the year progressed, the world reeled from the sudden imbalance in the very forces of nature that held the world together. The star, or so claimed those in the know, was growing closer every day, and with it grew the hostility of the dark ones. Plant life flourished, while the quality of animal life began to rapidly diminish, society's already cumbersome decay becoming so foul that it could barely contain itself. While most people go about their business quietly, eager to ignore the present state of affairs, others are crying that it's the end of the world…
Somewhere in the Hungarian Alps, a blood-soaked example of the threat currently posed by the dark haunted a mountain pass, its' lone katana making travel through the area virtually impossible. Released from his prison even as the illusion that bound him was relinquished, the Red Reaper known as Bishamon had come to lurk in this barren place, eagerly drawing sustenance from any passersby.
It was near dusk one day that the Evil Samurai spotted a caravan on the horizon. Crouching behind the makeshift shrine he had built for himself, the ghost in the armor peered out from under his helmet, waiting patiently for the time to strike.
As the wagon train drew near, he was almost puzzled; he had expected merchants, but based upon their flamboyant outfits and jovial manner, he could have taken these ones for performers; perhaps migrating gypsies?
They were all the same to him, cattle, save for one that stood out solely by the unusual "aura" she possessed. Barely eight years old, the little girl sat quietly beside a large, fat man with a beard. She wore a plain periwinkle dress over a white blouse tied with a large red bow around the neck. Her hair, incredibly long, was braided into twin pigtails, and her pale face seemed dominated by a pair of large blue eyes that held the strangest lack of emotion in them; not unlike the eyes of the brown-haired doll in the red dress she held in her arms.
The girl would occasionally glance around at the scenery, completely ignoring the concerned looks that the man insisted on giving her. The man, an uncle that had been the closest thing to a guardian she had known since her parents' death, knew his niece well enough to know she had a 'sixth sense' for danger, and so when she would look to the distance, as if trying to escape, he grew fearful for the safety of the camp. Finally, unable to stance the tension that had been building for hours, he spoke with a wavering voice, "Anita, it does not do to dwell on that which we cannot prevent, eh?"
The little girl looked up at him with a trace of sadness, like someone trying not to cry at a funeral, and spoke to him with that soft, distant voice, "I am in mourning; you are all going to die…"
The look on the man's face was purely horrified, and became more so as the horses reared up with a sudden whinny. He looked forward with a start to see the cacophony of burning wood and piercing screams that lay before him. Indeed, fire was the last thing he saw as a burning wagon wheel flew up, as if thrown in his direction, and knocked him from the stagecoach, pinning him underneath to his fate.
From somewhere in the wreckage, the figure of the little girl emerged silently, turning after she had traveled a few feet from the wreckage and viewing the spectacle as if standing over a grave.
She did not see the red-armored figure standing behind her with his sword raised high in the air, pointed downward, but she knew he was there. Bishamon glowered down at her; how had she survived the carnage? What was her secret? It did not matter, he told himself as the thrust his blade downward; she would die soon enough.
However, he had not expected his blade to be diverted by a random object spinning through the air in his direction. He clearly saw the shine of a large curved broad-blade; an attack he barely had time to dodge before it boomeranged around, landing in a perfect hover on the back of its' owner. He was tall, with tanned skin stretched over the well-toned muscles of a monk, his long brown hair hanging in a single braid behind him save for a rogue bang over his well chiseled face and the dark eyes within it. He wore a rich red and bronze colored robe held in place with a sky blue belt, and golden bangles over his wrists and neck. Most noteworthy of all, one of his eyes possessed a strange, fiery glow to it, not unlike the glowing red eye at the head of the "living blade" on his back, whose end was curved to look like a toothed mouth.
Bishamon skidded to a mid-stance as he eyed the stranger, "You too are of the dark? Come then! Let us cross swords and see whose is the greater!"
The strange man curled back his lips, revealing tightly gritted teeth, through which he spoke with an almost desperate look in his frantic eyes, "Girl! Get out of the way! I would not want your death!"
Anita looked over to him indifferently, "We all must die eventually."
The man was panting, "Not you. Not now. MOVE!" With no more warning than that, he dashed forward off a heel with alarming speed, elbowing the girl aside as he drew his blade from above and swung it downward to engage the ghastly armor.
Sword met sword before a fiery backdrop as the two powerful warriors put their weight behind their blades, each struggling with audible grunts to maintain a stalemate. As they did so, their visages became more intense, an ethereal black smoke rising in the air around them, witness to the dark power emanating from within.
Anita slowly drew herself to her feet, clutching her doll tightly as she watched, the scene reflecting along with an emotion in her eyes that had not been there before; a bitter glare.
Both fighters began to literally scream out, putting every bit of their power into the effort as one tried desperately to push the other back. Finally, Bishamon gasped with an echo as he felt his own feet sliding slowly along the ground. He looked down in shock to see that it was horribly true, then up to see that the expression on the face of his opponent was not a confident smirk as expected, but a cold glare all the same.
Pushing back with all his might, the red-armored specter found himself growing more and more powerless every time he looked into those focused eyes. "How is this possible?", he cried out at length.
The opponent, still staring him down, mouthed an answer, "Those who are made of darkness cannot compare to those who hunt the darkness."
With a hiss, Bishamon dropped his blade and rolled gracefully to the side, the katana rising to attack the hunter even as the owner made his getaway.
With a directed bat of his own sword, the man sent the blade returning to its' owner in a most unusual manner; directly into the plate on his back and out the front, piercing one of the demonic eyes in the chestplate. With a horrible cry, Bishamon fell to his knees, the soul within the armor escaping as a mist, leaving the individual pieces to fall, seemingly lifeless now.
The man lowered his sword with a thud to the ground, the glow in his left eye dimming as he looked to the girl, "Will you be alright?"
Anita, still glaring, threw the doll at him, "Thanks to you! You should have let me die! You should have let me join my mother!"
With almost no effort, the man caught the doll in one hand, and looked it over, "This doll; it reminds you of your mother, doesn't it? I saw you clinging to it."
The girl said nothing, but kept her focused glare on him.
The man returned an equally focused stare, holding the doll up and snapping its' head off between two of his large fingers, "Look at it. Your mother is dead."
"Damn you!", Anita screamed, tears welling up as she clenched her fists.
"So, you can cry", the man said coldly, "That means you can also feel. Your mother wouldn't want you to live your life in her shadow. She would want you to feel; she would want you to live." Without another word, he dropped the headless doll and turned to walk away.
Walking up slowly, Anita picked up the doll in her arms and walked after the stranger, dogging a few feet behind him. After some time, the man looked back at her, "I am a vampire hunter; why do you follow me?"
The girl stared up at him sincerely, "Your name is Donovan Baine; I follow you to watch you fail."
The amphitheater, with its' rows of seats filled with spectators and a high dome held up by a golden frame, was enormous. The dirt floor of the arena itself now supported a square wooden stage with stairs on each side, upon which predictably sat amplifiers with speakers that were large, even given the near-thousand fans that had turned out, along with an enormous Union Jack carpet upon which, in turn, stood a lone guitarist, red and black Schecter in hands, and a strange purple skinned and blue bellied one-eyed creature with red lips resembling a freakish lobster on the black and red drumset behind.
The guitarist, his mane of lavender hair luxuriously laying over his ivory skin, stood in his trademark violet Union Jack emblazoned trousers with a black leather codpiece and black leather belt tucked into studded leather boots that were dominated on one leg by a spiked black leg cuff. The fingerless violet gloves with their pyramid studs wrapped tightly over his nimble hands as they flew across the frets in a wild, distorted solo, accompanied by a steady, driving beat from his "associate" behind.
Zabel Zarock, now known throughout the Makai as Lord Raptor, smiled confidently; the fans were eating it up. Since his tutelage under the vicious Marionette, he had grown sneakier, craftier, and even genuinely wiser. She had his respect, as much as anyone did, and before sending him back into the Human World to continue his quest, she'd even left him with a parting gift; the handy little hellbeast currently on the drums, whom he had named Le Marta.
His plan seemed foolproof this time; he had arranged to be dropped off in Japan, where the current state of Americanization saw the country currently in the throes of the time period where he would have been at his biggest. Posing as an imitator of an obscure rock legend, himself of course, he had done the impossible and proven there is rock after death. Now it was only a matter of time until he accumulated the power he needed from these frail humans to accomplish his greater goal; the destruction of Jon Talbain, Demitri Maximoff, and every other darkstalker that stood between him and the "ultimate reward" promised by Ozomu so long ago.
Or so he thought. Among the raving fans, who looked like a bizarre mesh of punks, Goths, and other enlightened rebels, stood two twin oriental girls as pale as the moon, each dressed in an enormous-sleeved black kimono tied with a large gold bow at the waist. One wore her shoulder length, dark blue hair in an angular curl, while the other wore her shoulder-length, dark brown hair limp and straight.
"Do you suppose he'll suspect our auras among the crowd, sister?", the brown-haired one's voice spoke in the mind of the other as she looked forward.
The blue-haired one smiled almost as confidently as the self-proclaimed God of Metal onstage, returning the telepathic message, "His ego's so swollen he won't have time to notice a couple of girls like us. This is almost too easy."
Zabel closed his eyes, swinging the guitar down low and moving into a steady, four-chord grind, the drum beat slowing just enough to balance out as his voice echoed through the mike and over the crowd with an enigmatic distortion that made it all the more intriguing, cementing the entranced state of the audience. Though sung in the native tongue of Japan on this performance, the words were originally written as follows;
Far away, I crossed the crimson landscape
Failing in my health
Long ago, I passed the test of faith by
Believing in myself
I am the void; you're all a part of me now
Rejoice! Rejoice!
We all are one; the truth consumes you fully
Lift up your voice!
Of course, as he felt the energy of the now-willing participants in his occult scheme flow steadily into him, Zabel could not have imagined the two girls, unfazed, slowly pushing their way to the front. Even if he had, he was too drunk on the lifeforce that had just been given him to really care at this point. As such, he was not particularly affected when the blue-haired girl leapt onstage, her sleeves flying back to reveal a metallic claw weapon on each hand with three blades each the size of longswords.
The girl kept her eyes focused sharply on him, sending her sister a final message in her mind before they began, "Alright Lin-Lin, let's take this bozo out."
The brown-haired girl, Lin Lin, nodded once and flung a pale hand into the air, vanishing in a puff of smoke save for a golden parchment charm that floated like a feather through the air, landing on the blue-haired girl's forehead. "There. That ought to make up for whatever power you've stolen", she smirked, lowering into a crouch stance, her claws crossed over her front in a metallic triple x.
Zabel rolled his head to face her and smiled lecherously, ending the song on a dissonant screech, "Marta, keep the beat mate; I'll need some background music for this!" Rounding his fingers up the fretboard, the ghoulish guitarist began an ascending rift, his body beginning to smolder, seemingly from within, the higher he got, until at the shrill, echoing peak, he had become his true self; a skeletal horror with spiked hair.
The blue-haired teen rolled her eyes, "Impressive; Not! Let's get this over with!" With a screeching leap, she uncrossed her claws in a split second and brought them down in a massive attack in another.
Leaping aside, Zabel spun his guitar, which exploded in a flash of red light to reveal a black chainsaw with a blade twice as long as any one of her claws now strapped to his arm, "Nice move sweetheart; keep it up and I might get a scratch 'er somethin'!"
The girl let out a heh before thrusting her claw forward inches from the ghoul's face, "Let's see what you think of this…"
Zabel blinked, "I think it's prolly Made in China?"
She giggled in response, "Not that; THIS!" Without warning, the claw shot forward on a straight chain and belted him across the face, sending him spinning off the stage, "I crack myself up sometimes…"
No sooner had she got the line out than Zabel burst up through the wood of the stage in an ascending spin, chainsaw high in the air as he came to a stop, "I'll crack you up!"
The teenage hunter took her stance, "Alright then, but this time it's for real!"
With naught but a mad cackle, Zabel flung himself downward at her in response.
The sunset was cherry red, fluffy pink clouds overlaying the gold behind and casting it out in bold rays across the English sky. Rainy days were good for remembering, and sunsets helped you forget; that's the way Jon Talbain looked at things.
The seaside fishing village with its' wooden marinas and brick homes where he'd been living for the past seven years, hell the entire east side of the Atlantic Ocean, just held too many memories for him. As he stood on the docks that evening in his brown leather coat and blue jeans, he knew he'd be gone with the next boat.
Of course, it was just his luck to get a curveball thrown at him whenever he decided to step up to the plate in life. The boat, a gigantic white and blue cruise ship, did pull in as expected, but he hadn't figured on a certain catwoman with her royal blue hair pulled back into a neat, curled tail to come stepping dramatically down the ramp in a sparkling white dress with a beige, low-brimmed hat to match.
"You", was all he could get out as he saw her walking toward him. It was so like a dream, and the astonishment must have been apparent on his face.
And, like in a dream, she gave him that whimsical smile of hers, "Miss me?"
He wanted to pinch himself, but was too afraid, "Every damn day."
Aulbath stood firm on the snowy mountain, maintaining a fluid stance and breathing heavily as he focused his gaze on his opponent; the equally readied Quatos. He couldn't help but smile as his gills rippled with the breeze, "This time you won't be able to say I have the home team advantage, Furry One!"
Quatos returned the competitive grin and slammed one large fist into the opposite palm as he stood flat-footed in the cold, "Your funeral, Scales."
The merman drew back in a deep inhale, throwing his chest forward with his head as he released a massive wave of sonic energy at the sasquatch, who reflexively crossed his large arms over his face and torso in a block, the force of the attack barely succeeding in getting his large feet to skid to the edge of the cliffs.
Quatos looked up, only half-surprised to see a green-scaled figure diving out of the cloudy gray sky at him, a confident gleam in his sparkling blue eyes. What did surprise him was when the aquatic wonder was suddenly knocked asunder by what appeared to be a flashing beam of red light that crackled with electricity as it struck his body and sent him crashing into the mountainside below.
The yeti looked up, his beady red eyes narrowing as he saw not one, but three figures hovering in the sky at just close enough a range to make out details. They were strange creatures, resembling barrel-chested figurines made of grayed steel with oblong arms and legs that seemed to gyrate with thousands of tiny mechanical pistons from within. The head, a flattened looking thing with large, bulbous red eyes like traffic lights and a tri-circular ornament on top, was the most bizarre of all.
Quatos was about to give the things a piece of his mind, but they spoke first in flat, mechanical tones that seemed to be in perfect unison, "Sentient lifeforms detected. Challenge level 14. Initiate extermination phase Final Guardian B."
Gritting his large fangs together in a growl, the mighty sasquatch slammed his fists into the ground, "Come on! I'll take you all!"
Of course, as the chest-plates of the mechanical assassins slid open to reveal large circular cannons hidden underneath, the insides glowing with a deadly blue light, he began to wonder what he'd gotten himself into.