Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Street Fighter. Now I'm going to take that frustration from knowing that fact, bottle it all up for another two weeks, and then unleash it on some poor hapless opponent's body when I can finally get another fight again. Punching things when you're allowed to punch them is great anger management. It's why I've only been stark-raving mad one time over the last three years.
I don't know what this has to do with a disclaimer. Just humor me alright?
Chapter 42: Sugar and Spice
Sitting in a break room in a pretty high-tech laboratory facility in Brazil, Guile found the time to catch a few 'z's. It was a much needed nap, because he and Chun-Li had been making calls all over South America trying to find a proper place to analyze what they'd found in the Amazon. Eventually it led them back to Brazil. More specifically Sao Paulo, and the most progressive lab that specialized in studying obscure phenomena with the human body.
In other words they tried to unlock the secrets of ki usage without taking part in the hard work that it actually took to access it.
It was just the way people in the world were. It wasn't like ki was some big secret. No one had ever tried to hide it, and the concept to utilizing it was simple. It took diligent hard work, drive, and focus. More than most people were willing to put forth for no reason. The body and mind needed to be trained and well enough in synch that you could consciously use it.
Untrained humans could use ki as well, but it only manifested itself in times of intense adrenaline bursts. True do or die situations. It was what allowed people wounded by gunfire to continue fighting battles. The old story told a million times of a woman with her child pinned underneath a car, and how she was able to lift it to save him… ki.
Everyone had it, but without proper training it just wasn't able to be used for the superhuman feats that they performed. It would lay dormant.
And this lab was one of the places that tried uncover a way for people to just tap into that energy. What a joke. It would have been funny if it didn't piss him off so much just out of principle; the thought that the ability that people had struggled to access for millennia would become nothing more special than an appendix; something that you'd just have but no one knew what the use of it was for.
There was a reason that only fighters that developed their physical abilities to the peak could utilize ki, or chi, or in Naruto's case chakra. Whatever you wanted to call it, the reasoning was the same. When bare hands weren't good enough, when there was a reason to go beyond what humans could be capable of normally, when you wanted to break the limits, and you truly wished to work for it, then and only then was the power available to you.
A kick to the leg of the chair he was sitting in woke Guile up and his head darted up off of table to glare at the side where Chun-Li was standing with a mischievous smile on her face. The damn woman could have at least shown some displeasure in having to wake him up.
"I thought pilots were supposed to be alert and all that jazz." Chun-Li said as she sat down across from him at the small table, "It seems like I'm the one doing all of the actual detective work here, but that is my job after all I guess."
Guile folded his muscular arms on the table and sucked his teeth indignantly, "Yeah, well I don't know if you've noticed but they don't really like Americans here. Especially big, blonde, military, roughneck, asshole Americans like me." At least he could admit to a fault or two of his own, "It helps you that you're not even from this hemisphere… and you know, the whole being a woman and being pretty thing doesn't hurt either."
"I'm flattered, but you're still a married man so you'd better watch yourself." Chun-Li drawled, setting her cheek into her hand as she posted her elbow on the surface in front of her, "Either way, you should hear some of what these people are talking about here."
So he was guessing that these people had been able to come up with something about the bodies that their own people hadn't, "What do you have?"
Chun-Li set a paper on the table with a diagram of the human body, "Okay. So in all of their years of doing this, technology is finally good enough where over the last twenty years they're finding out all of this stuff that a lot of us already knew about was true." The look on Guile's face was requesting that she explain, "Okay, those of us that actually studied the effects of this kind of thing. Like for instance the human body has 361 acupuncture points, pressure points, you know."
Guile nodded, but scratched his flat top head, "Yeah… I didn't know there were 361 of them but I know about pressure points. That whole Chinese martial arts myth and whatnot."
Some people would call anything a myth, even after seeing all that they'd seen. Chun-Li had personally seen Gen paralyze a man's arm for life with nine strikes to specific places on the limb. With a shake of her head the young Interpol detective continued, "Whatever. Anyway, people outside of specific ki-sensitive martial arts are just now realizing that these are more than just sensitive points on the body. They're the places where ki is exuded from inside."
"And?"
"Getting to that if you'll just wait." Chun-Li replied bitingly to Guile's impatience, "I told you that to tell you this. Remember those bodies we found? Every one of them looked like something had burst or exploded or something."
How could he forget? Admittedly he'd seen worse before. Smelled worse too. But it was still something that you didn't forget that easily.
"What about them?" Finding out just what the deal with them had been was the entire reason they'd stayed in Brazil to begin with. They had more important things they needed to follow up on, but they couldn't leave something like that a loose end untied, "What killed them?"
Instead of saying anything, Chun-Li placed pictures of the bodies on the table. One with his arms blown off, another with his chest blown open, the last with his head blown off. Silently she tapped each of the pictures and then tapped corresponding places on the pressure point chart.
The intent was not lost on Guile, "You're saying that their own ki blew them up?"
"The autopsy showed that every single pressure point on their bodies were swollen and damaged, as if the bodies weren't used to bringing out any ki period." Chun-Li continued to explain, "Something forced it out of them. There was an unknown chemical in their systems and that might have been the catalyst."
"Like some kind of drug? These guys are guinea pigs for some kind of weapon."
Chun-Li just shrugged in response to the question, "Something like that. And I don't like what that means. I don't think it's a direct biological weapon, or that it's supposed to be anyway. Whoever did this also kidnapped fighters with access to ki so they could find something out about the process. I think it's something deeper than just a bio weapon."
"It's not really a bio weapon anyway." Guile said, "If it was, we probably would have gotten it, and everything in that clearing would have. Other than a few animals that were probably guinea pigs too nothing else in the forest was infected."
Its nature was different from any other weapon they'd seen before. Like something that could potentially allow others to freely utilize ki without having to undergo the work necessary to gain access to it. That could be catastrophic. But it clearly wasn't the only thing wrong. This was a problem, because even if that part of it never came to fruition, if that was even the intent, without giving people ki usage it was still a deadly weapon.
But this seriously wasn't Shadaloo's modus operandi. It was too… indirect. And establishing one person as the overlord of the entire world did not seem like the endgame here.
So there was someone or something else out there pulling clandestine crap at the expense of the world. Wonderful.
XxX
(India – S.I.N. Dam)
The inside of the dam base was much more peaceful than the outside, at least as far as Ibuki could tell. It was positively huge, and she was only at the top level interior. She really hoped she wouldn't have to travel all the way to the bottom levels to get to where she needed to be, but it wasn't like there was a tank inside shooting at her so even if she did it would be okay. There had been a few automatic gun cameras, but those were easy enough to avoid for a techno-savvy ninja.
Employees within dressed way differently than employees outside from what she'd seen. Most of the people inside wore thick white suits that looked hazmat in nature, with visors over their faces to protect them from whatever they were doing. Scientific stuff, because from the chatter she picked up while sneaking through the joint she couldn't make heads or tails of the technical terms being used.
It made sense though that this whole place was just one big science lab when she took the time to think about it. Experiments and tests had to take a lot of power to run, and where better to set up a secret facility for such a thing than a hydroelectric dam? It wasn't like they'd have a shortage on the necessary energy then.
All of the fuss that Naruto and Batsu were making outside was working swimmingly for her sneaking mission though. Most of the scientists were crowding around any video feed to outside they could find to watch the two boys… fight a tank.
At least they all said it was a tank. It didn't have tires like a tank, but that main gun certainly looked and sounded like one.
Huh. She really needed to find the main control room and sabotage it quickly then didn't she?
And the room with the entire wall closest to her comprised of glass to see inside of it seemed like a good choice, especially due to the fact that there were a ton of massive computer servers inside, and enough monitors overseeing every other conceivable room of importance in the dam including close-ups of the closed off floodgates themselves.
"Ahem."
What? Someone caught her? Bullshit, she didn't alert anyone that she was there. No camera caught her, no person saw her, no motion sensors got her. What the hell?
A woman with long red hair in a single braid going down her back stared up at a seemingly normal patch of concrete wall inside of the dingily-lit dam. She was the only person that Ibuki had seen thus far that didn't wear one of those ridiculous white suits you'd see in a quarantine, instead wearing a rather cool suit. Looking at the woman's exposed cleavage gave her a bit of breast envy, and that was saying something because she was no slouch in that department herself.
"I can see you." The suited woman said, waving up at the unassuming patch of wall that she had been staring at for a few moments now, "Seriously. Get down. You're embarrassing yourself."
The jig was up, so Ibuki dropped from the wall, holding a camouflage sheet that she quickly tossed away now that it was useless to her, "You could see me? Unless you have x-ray eyes lady I would really be interested in figuring out how just what gave me away. I didn't leave a print or a trace anywhere in this place." She said with her facemask up over her nose and mouth.
The smartly dressed woman tapped her amber sunglasses and smirked, "These do more than make me look good. I can find people with extraordinary amounts of ki. Compared to the scientists and soldiers that work here, you might as well be a lighthouse on the shores of Maine."
Ibuki just stared at her blankly for several seconds before tilting her head confusedly, "…What?" The woman just sighed and shook her head while holding her temple, "Wait, who are you anyway?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Doesn't matter?"
"Because you're still going to catch a beating for trespassing sweetheart." Without warning, the woman rushed forward swiftly with electricity crackling around her gloved hands, "Thunder Knuckle!" Ibuki kicked off of the wall behind her and flipped over the woman's head, landing behind her in a sliding crouch as the attempted punch busted through the concrete wall as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
"Wow." Ibuki said upon seeing her adversary's initial attack, "You hit hard for an old lady. Really hard."
It was a testament to the even temper of said 'old lady's' businesslike façade, because in her mind she had visions of breaking Ibuki's neck at that moment, "I should. It's what we've been working on." Who was that whelp of a girl calling an old lady? She was only thirty for goodness sake, "Now what does a ninja want with our work?"
Ooh, their work.
Speaking of which, since her cover was blown anyway, Ibuki had no reason to try and keep things low-key any longer, thus she unfolded a very large fuuma shuriken that she'd somehow smuggled in without it hindering her actions at all and threw it.
Not at the lady challenging her, but at the glass wall that shattered once the weapon hit the glass and cut through it, stabbing into a computer screen at the back end of the room and alerting the hapless workers inside, "Miss Viper, what's going on!?" One of them shouted in shock.
Ibuki smiled at Viper underneath her facemask while Viper just tightened her gloves on her hands, "What does it look like? The security breach isn't limited to just outside with those boys. Now get out of the way or you'll just get hurt." Whatever the ninja girl wanted was in that room.
They didn't need to be told twice and all ran out through the broken glass wall as Ibuki disappeared past them and out of Viper's view with her afterimage-producing speed technique Kasumi Gake.
Reappearing right in front of the console that housed the screens that had camera views of the floodgates, Ibuki found herself hesitating, 'Wait, which one of these opens them?'
"Burning Kick!" From behind, Ibuki had to duck and roll aside lest she find herself nailed in the back of the head by a jumping spin kick from Viper, complete with a explosion of fire from her boots. The kick missed and Viper landed nimbly on the control panel, her feet not touching a single switch or button as she flipped her hair back smugly, "Careful, don't hit the self-destruct button. You'll never make it out in time."
Ibuki's eye twitched at the thought she'd jokingly made earlier coming back to bite her. She didn't really think the place would have a self-destruct button, "I'll keep that in mind." But seriously, fire and electricity? Who could use both of those simultaneously?
Somewhere in Aohura City a pissed off Sasuke sneezed for absolutely no reason whatsoever, thus pissing him off further.
Viper jumped into the air with a front flip and fire started building at her feet. Ibuki slid briskly across the slick floor to avoid what would have been a fiery stomp. Upon landing, she dashed after Ibuki in pursuit, closing the gap between them faster than the latter had anticipated.
Reaching out a hand to hook onto the leg of a bolted down table, Ibuki swung herself around it in a sharp turn and shot herself back in the opposite direction underneath the table itself. At the end Ibuki had gone other from, Viper peered underneath to see that Ibuki had stopped herself halfway under just waiting for her to take a look so that she could throw a kunai at her head.
It missed when Viper pulled her head back up but when she looked underneath again, Ibuki was gone, 'What the-?' Looking up she saw Ibuki dropping her way from the sky and placed her hands underneath the top of the table, exerting a massive amount of her effort and her suit's effort to rip the bolted metal table up off of the floor on one end and block the series of falling bicycle kicks from the barefoot kunoichi.
Ibuki bounced off and landed on the floor right in front of it but moved when she heard the bolts at the other end get ripped out, resulting in the table flipping over entirely with a crushing noise of ringing metal hitting floor.
She was then met with a series of fists flying her way with electricity crackling off of the knuckles, and from that moment forward committed to never being hit with those fists a single time. A retaliatory jumping dropkick hit Viper in the chest, but a follow-up backfist was stopped.
Ibuki's three long topknot tails that she kept her hair in were grabbed in one hand and used to yank her head back so that Viper could deliver a downward elbow strike to her chest that dropped her to the floor.
'Gah, she fights so dirty!' Ibuki thought to herself, blinking back tears as her hand was tightly pressed to her bosom area, 'Ironic considering I'm a ninja, but-.' She rolled aside before a punch that busted through the floor could do the same to her skull and a secondary sweep from Viper missed as Ibuki got her distance again.
She leapt backwards into the air, launching three kunai at Viper who kicked them away with the bottom of one of her boots, "I didn't crush your breastbone with that elbow? Perhaps you'll be a decent test for this suit." She said while adjusting her tie around her neck.
"It's a very nice suit." Ibuki said, partly being honest, partly poking fun at her deadly enemy. If only she knew just how badly that hit had really hurt her she would have been rushing her at that very moment, "Really, very sexy keeping those buttons undone with the collar buttoned. I like that touch."
"Not what I meant, but I'll take that compliment." Viper said before jetting into the air via the mechanism in her suit's boots. Her attempt to stomp on Ibuki with a Burning Kick failed when Ibuki dodged and left an afterimage in her place with Kasumi Gake. Once again Ibuki went for the floodgates console before Viper twisted a dial on her gloves and punched the floor, "Seismic Hammer!"
Underneath Ibuki the ground instantly ruptured and popped Ibuki hard into a wall.
Satisfied at the performance of the suit against a fighter that had proficient control of her ki, Crimson Viper adjusted her gloves again and lunged swiftly at Ibuki to finish her with a lightning punch, "Thunder Knuckle!"
Ibuki had hidden her right hand underneath her thigh to hide the fact that she was focusing. Viper's glasses might have been able to tell her if someone had free use of their ki and worked to develop it, but that was where the tactical advantage ended. She couldn't see if someone was building it up in preparation for a move.
The moment her fist lashed out to strike at Ibuki she was ready to counter by striking out with her fist covered in crackling blue energy. The stalemate of energy didn't result in a standoff, as Ibuki immediately spun through and placed her elbow right at Crimson Viper's chest, "Let's really put this suit to the test. Yoroitoshi (Armor Piercer)!"
Using her opposite elbow for a more focused point to release her ki from, Ibuki's attack blew Viper away straight into the floodgates console. Giving her a receipt for the earlier attack that smashed her into a wall, Viper instead hit the screens of the computer and landed in a heap on the console, hitting who knew how many switches and buttons, 'Damn it, I was unattentive.'
A rumbling noise could be heard through the dam that sounded like it came from the lower levels and Ibuki cringed, "Oh no, that wasn't the self-destruct sequence was it?" She asked fearfully. Nobody would ever let her live it down for calling Naruto and Batsu luddites and then accidentally blowing up a damn because she didn't know what button was what.
"Flood control." Viper managed to get out, straining to talk while holding her body. The suit was designed to mimic the ability of ki-users, but it wasn't designed to stand up to attacks taken from ki-users, hence why it heightened her speed enough to keep up with and outpace people with Ibuki's speed at times. She might as well have just taken that attack with one of the vests one of the guards outside wore for protection.
It was better than taking the attack without it though, which was why blood hadn't started leaking from her mouth due to catastrophic internal injury yet. She was better than she could have been otherwise.
Ibuki didn't say anything about it, but the fact that she had remained mostly functional after taking the business half of her Yoroitoshi finisher was kind of remarkable. If she'd been able to use both attacks in the combination, the first to soften the initial point of targeting and the second as the kill shot, it definitely would have done just that and killed her. Instead she sacrificed the first portion of the attack to stop the Thunder Knuckle safely.
Still though, she released the floodgates. That was good right? Yay. Time to leave? That rumbling didn't feel like it would lead to unanimous good times all around though.
"So…" Ibuki said, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet uncomfortably before taking off in a run to get outside and see just what she'd done, "Bye!"
Viper couldn't block the sigh that came from her lips despite how much it hurt her quite damaged ribs and lungs to do so, because she had just lost to that girl, 'Suit needs more testing against adequate foes…' She thought to herself before she started limping away to an escape vehicle up top.
XxX
(Moments Earlier – Outside of the Dam)
"Do you still want to fight a tank?" A loud Batsu asked snidely as he and Naruto found a rocky outcropping that no tank could enter and move through, even the highly mobile tank after them currently. Thus the tank chose to simply back off and bombard their position with heavy gun fire, machine gun fire being used on any attempt from Naruto's clones to try and divert its attention, "How's that working out for you jackass?"
Naruto's tempting fate earlier notwithstanding, he'd done it too. He was quick to forget that part though since Naruto clearly had in exchange for falling back to a somewhat fortified position (read: cowering for their lives).
"Shut up! I shot down an armored attack chopper with my bare hands so I figured that we had a chance!" Naruto argued in return, shouting over the roar of tank fire, "The two of us can beat a regular tank any day by ourselves! But damn that thing is fast! It's like a tank from the future. A future tank!"
It definitely wasn't normal. Tanks shouldn't have been able to move in exact opposite directions with just one second to turn. Tanks shouldn't have had that much ordinance to shoot the main gun at them for forty-five minutes straight. Tanks shouldn't have been able to take a Kyuubi-charged Super Breath Cannon at point-blank range from the top.
"Use that head for more than storing rocks in the empty cavity where your brain should be! Come up with a plan!" Batsu said, smacking him on the back of the neck, "You do it all the time. I'm pretty sure a bunch of guys we fought in the past would have killed you if you weren't able to."
"It's always me Batsu! Why the fuck do I always have to come up with the plans? I've never lied to you jerks and said I was smart. I'm really good at improv yeah, but I'm not Napoleon so why do I always have to pull something out of my ass to win at times like this?" Naruto fired back, "You do it! Or is getting routine sex killing your tiny amount of brain cells or something?"
"Jealous?" Even then Batsu had to stop and smell the roses by taking a shot at his friend. That tank's heavy gun wasn't even shooting shells at them. It was more like ki or something. A big blast of ki that would rip them into pieces if they were hit with it, "Maybe routine sex would get your tiny amount of brain cells to circulate useful ideas outside of eating and blowing stuff up."
Blowing up stuff was kind of what they needed at the moment though.
"Bite me. I don't know how to stop a tank. Destroying its treads is the only thing I know that'll work for starters, and if you haven't noticed-." Naruto said, gesturing to the very tank with the single rolling orb at the bottom of it that allowed it to move completely freely and on demand, "-There aren't any treads on this thing."
Batsu punched into his palm as another shot shook the landscape, "I wish we could just tear that thing open like a tomato can if it wasn't suicide to go out there. You sure you can't Rasengan it or something? You said it tore the tail off of a chopper like a piñata before."
"This is a space-age tank." Naruto pointed out vindictively, "…It's a little bit thicker." Try a lot thicker. As in thick enough to eat a Kyuubi-charged Super Breath Cannon from the top without stopping. Still though, he had to wonder, "How durable could that ball thing really be though? They covered it enough that you'd have to be a mole to take a shot at it so it's got to be kind of vulnerable right?"
It just went around or blew up any trap they'd gotten enough minute distance to hurriedly lay out while running away from it, so that was out of the question. Seriously, that cannon was not shooting shells or else they would have run out by now with how much they'd been fired on, and every shot blasted out in the same color as the orb underneath the bottom of the tank's hull.
The orb was glowing from beneath the tank even now, making it look almost UFOish in the dusk, especially how the hull itself levitated three to four feet off of the ground. To put it bluntly it didn't look like the most stable thing in the world was under there.
And Naruto's mind was racing to power the lightbulb that had just lit up in his brain, "Batsu… I'm about to do something really stupid. When I do it I need you to hit this thing with your best shot that you can give it without getting close. But for Kami's sake, just don't miss."
"You're not seriously gonna-?" He started to say before Naruto nodded grimly, cutting off his question with an answer, "Oh… I won't miss. But are you-?" Before he could even finish that last sentence, Naruto jumped out from the rocky area they'd been hiding in and ran for the tank, "-Sure? Nevermind."
With that he just jumped up on top of the tallest rock he could find and started channeling his raw anger into enhanced energy, bathing his body in a fiery yellow-orange. With the Burning Vigor technique activated he focused tons of ki to hands to prepare his strongest move.
"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" The scene out in the open was like something out of old-school war movie, with hundreds of Naruto's charging straight ahead yelling bloody hell at the tank that just shot everything it had at them. The gun operator, the driver, and/or the rest of the tank crew had to have crapped their pants at the sight of it.
Eventually Naruto himself managed to make it through the anarchy of bullets and explosions with gratuitous use of Kawarimi no Jutsu and willing clones to substitute with. Without a second of hesitation, Naruto slid under the tank that had slightly been lifted off of the ground via the part beneath it that allowed it 360 degree stop-on-a-dime lightweight mobility.
Naruto's gamble had paid off for the time being as he stuck to the underside of the hull. He had to be run over by the orb directly in order to be crushed, but even so, the underside of the hull was just as tough as the rest of the outside. And the orb was snugly attached, half inside the tank, half underneath it allowing the vehicle to roll without being a cumbersome eyesore.
"Damn this thing is hot." Sticking his back to the tank underside with chakra, Naruto looked at his hands and took a deep breath before tapping into some of the Kyuubi's chakra. Just enough so that he could make this work better than it otherwise would have, "Chou Ikitaihou (Super Breath Cannon)!" From his mouth, Naruto fired a massive amount of blue and red chakra that did more than carve a brutal trench into the ground beneath his face as the tank kept moving.
It also managed to do its best impression of hydraulics and pushed the front end of the tank up into the air, just high enough for just long enough to provide Batsu with the clearest view of the orb that either of them had gotten all day. Even Naruto's close-up view wasn't that good due to how bright it was. He couldn't look at it without hurting his eyes
It was a black and white orb glowing a pale blue that looked like a yin-yang symbol, radiating enough power to even keep the slightest specks of dirt and grime off of it, making it look big and bright and pristine.
Needless to say there was no chance in hell that anyone could have missed that big flashing beacon. And Batsu didn't.
"Nekketsu Zenkai Kiaidan (Burning Super Guts Bullet)!" Raging orange ki half the size of Batsu's entire body screamed forth from his hands the second he saw the first inner circle of the yin-yang thing underneath the tank, and it covered the necessary distance like a rocket before blowing up right on target.
The resulting explosion was the most incredible light show of unnatural white and black fire that he'd ever seen, towering fifty feet into the air and in diameter and taking even the clones that weren't caught in the big bang along with it.
Arms slumped uselessly to the side, Batsu's jaw dropped at the sight that he couldn't take his eyes off of until the blast subsided, "What an odd-sized explosion…"
And once he did he realized that his close personal friend for many years, through thick and thin, good and bad, peace and… not-so-peace, had been extremely close to that blast.
"Naruto!" Batsu shouted, hopping down from his rock to run over to the site of ground-zero where he could start looking for him and eventually found a blackened, soot covered Naruto awake and staring up at the sky from flat on his back, "Oh man, Naruto!"
All Naruto did was cough once, never taking his eyes off of the newly exposed moon in the sky.
Batsu hurried over to him and sat him up, patting the black grime off of Naruto before figuring it was futile and giving it a rest. A good hour long shower or several with industrial soap would take care of that.
Things were silent for a bit before Batsu couldn't take not reveling in their victory any longer, "That was fucking awesome! Did you see that?"
And just like that, Naruto's eyes lit up and he couldn't help but join on in, "See it? I was almost in it!" He dropped immediately and ran for it when he saw Batsu charging up a big orange Super Guts Bullet, but even the chakra cloak couldn't let him outrun an explosion like that, "I thought I was deaf until just now!"
"You can't go deaf permanently with me here idiot." Kyuubi chimed in out of the blue, "You both just vaporized a tank crew of people and scorched a quarter-mile of earth by the way. Way to pop your cherry on the former. Congrats."
"What was with that flame?" Batsu asked, shaking his head as he started pacing back and forth, "Black and white fire? Have you ever even seen that before?"
'Once.' Naruto thought idly before getting up off of the ground, "Oh, I wish I had a picture of that. Three things that I wish I had a picture of: Budokan Hall getting demolished, whatever me and Sasuke did to make that crater at the martial arts temple in Thailand, and that explosion. I mean-." He stopped talking as he realized that the roar of the explosion's echo hadn't rescinded yet. Unless that wasn't an explosion echo, "What's that?"
Their mutual celebration of how cool that had just been wound up being cut short. Both of them turned in the direction of the dam and then quickly wished they hadn't before taking off in a sprint as fast as they could in the other direction, "High ground, high ground, high ground! Fuck it, climb a tree!"
The reason being, that a gigantic wave of fresh water that had been held up behind a dam had come out way too quickly for the immediate area. Up to two miles out from the dam would wind up being flooded as a result of the floodgates opening all at once… which was really only just two miles of the three that comprised the land that S.I.N. had taken over for privacy anyway, so absolutely nothing was really there.
Except for Naruto, Batsu, blown up segments of a high-tech tank, and roughly 150 soldiers that had been keeping the rest of the area locked down while their experimental high-tech tank tried to murder their teenage intruders.
Climbing a tree was a good idea to start with. Unfortunately enough, gallons upon gallons of water slamming into the trunk of the wrong tree could fell it, and that was what happened to theirs. The absolute worst log ride ever.
XxX
(Meanwhile – Aohura City, Japan – Karin's Personal Manor)
Juri fought in a manner that none of them had ever come across before. True enough, Chun-Li fought a very kick-heavy style, but that was her own personal preference. Kicks worked better for her than using her hands when it came to delivering devastating impact from most of her attacks because… well all you had to do was take one look at the things to see why! That was like asking why a hammer was good for smashing things.
To compare, Juri simply did not punch, at all. Period. If she fought with her hands tied behind her back, everything else that had occurred in the fight still would have happened as it already had. None of the girls would have been able to justify anything going differently.
Which made it extra painful when Sakura woke up lying on cold ornate brick outside by a hole in the bay window downstairs.
'Whuh?' Sakura slowly pushed herself up despite the pain stinging at her body. Bruised and battered most definitely, she started standing up and picking shards of glass out of her left arm, 'What happened?' Looking up at the moon as she tried to regain her bearings.
Oh, and just like a computer rebooting now she remembered. She got a bit overzealous going for a Shunpukyaku to try and maneuver Juri into a trap of a move from Cammy and wound up paying for it. But did she get knocked out because of what happened? Oh God.
She could still hear things getting annihilated inside though and got up to try and rejoin the fight at hand that she'd been previously KOed out of. It wasn't like they'd been necessarily winning when she'd gone for that move, hence why she'd put herself at risk just to try and give one of her friends an open shot. She didn't even remember seeing what hit her. Just a lot of purple, or pink. She didn't recall exactly.
Getting up and running back into the mansion she went through several of the larger rooms on that floor, seeing many motionless bodies in the main foyer. The main staircase upstairs had been devastated. The ornate railing had been completely torn through and many of the stairs had been broken through. Not even talking about the wall next to it.
Tearing off the sleeve of one arm of her battered uniform, Sakura used it to temporarily tie off a cut from the glass that had hurt her arm. The living room, the atrium, the downstairs parlor, all looked as if a drunken forklift driver had run right through them, walls included. Luckily she had dozens more rooms where those came from.
Speaking of the downstairs parlor, just outside of the room right by the doorway to enter, Sakura came to a stop when Karin flew through them and hit the wall on the opposite side of the hall with a crack to go along with the hole her body made in it that was five times her size.
"Ugh…" Karin groaned, holding a bump on her head that was bleeding down one side of her face. Much like Sakura her own red uniform was cut and shredded. Her blue bola tie underneath the collar of her shirt was completely undone and hanging, "I fear…" She said upon noticing Sakura's presence, "…We have not made much headway in defeating this Juri Han. Help me stand Sakura-san."
Sakura did as she'd asked and feared she'd need help walking, but Karin did not as both of them entered the parlor where they had usually sat and spent time whenever anyone had been at Karin's home away from home.
Cammy wasn't looking any more pristine than the two of them did. Her hat had been discarded at some point in the battle, and her hair had been forced out of its usual twin braids, but she was still standing and fighting unlike the two of them that had been knocked out of the fight at separate intervals.
Unlike them though, Cammy didn't have the luxury of taking five. If she went down Juri repeatedly and expressly stated that she would murder her at the first opportunity given.
Pulling a knife from one of her boots, Cammy hurled it straight at Juri but hit nothing other than a pillar in the room as it sailed past her, "Cute." She said before jumping forward with a spinning flourish that ended in a heel kick. Cammy avoided it and the floor wound up smashed underneath the strength of Juri's pointed attack, "Did your little 'ninja' friend give you that to teach you how to kill for him better? Going from one master to another I guess! Pathetic!"
"I don't kill for anyone!" Cammy yelled back, beginning to lose her temper. Juri kept nastily referring to her as a malfunctioning Doll, an emotionless executioner, Bison's murderous little call girl, or any other number of nasty names, "I don't even remember what I did back then! I haven't killed since I first came here!"
"You think one year of being a good little girl just cleans the slate?" Juri said with a mocking laugh before her glare turned absolutely malevolent, "No. You apparently lost your memory. Big deal. That doesn't change what you've done." She stomped a foot on the floor, busting through it with her foot again, "Do you have any idea how many lives you and your 'sisters' ended? Especially you! You were supposedly the best! The original! Created and raised through childhood for only the purpose of serving Shadaloo and M. Bison's needs."
Sakura held a hand to her chest at a thought that came to her. Cammy had been with Shadaloo for years before that fateful day she'd come across them. And it was true, there was no telling how many or just who she had killed before then, "Did… Did Cammy kill someone close to you?"
Juri's killing intent turned full-blast onto Sakura, but she stood strong. At least until Juri let out a laugh a smiled slyly, "No. She didn't. But Shadaloo itself did." Then why the hell did she want to kill Cammy so bad, "That entire organization, it took everything from me, and it makes me sick. Bison may be dead, but I won't stop until every ounce of Shadaloo is eradicated, from the bottom to the top, everyone active for him in his time, until his shadow is completely erased from this world. All of them bear the sinful stink of that lunatic and I'll clean it off with fire."
Cammy looked down at her own hands with a thoughtful frown on her pretty features. Was she really that bad of a person before she lost her memory? Dhalsim said that she had no sense of self-awareness much less a sense of right or wrong, but did that really make any difference?
Now more than ever she was certain that she didn't want to remember anything about her past. If what she'd done wound up with someone hating her so resolutely without ever even meeting her prior to now, amnesia was probably the best thing she could have been afflicted with. It gave her a second chance. Or a first chance period seeing as how she'd never had one to begin with.
"Aww, is the heartless little killer having a moment of solemn reflection?" Juri said, breaking her from her thoughts, "Come on Killer Bee, show me what makes you so damn special compared to the rest of those flesh and blood robots. You're not using brainwashing as an excuse for getting out of paying for your sins."
"You're right, I won't ask for that any longer." Cammy said in quiet acceptance, "But even if my past keeps trying to catch up to me it still doesn't mean I can't keep looking and moving toward the future. All I have to do is stay ahead of it."
"How sweet. But how's that future going to work out when you're not going to live for five more minutes?" Dark energy gathered at Juri's elevated leg before she swung it and kicked a wavy crescent of purplish-pink ki at Cammy, "Fuhajin (Wind Breaking Blade)!"
"Hadoken (Surge Fist)!" Sakura's own training with Ryu's tips and programs given to her months ago showed the fruits of that labor when she fired a straight and fast Hadoken, well-aimed that intercepted Juri's own projectile and allowed Cammy the freedom to rush forward and fight once more.
Watching Juri dodge Karin's attacks earlier upstairs really did help Cammy by giving her time to analyze the woman's movements. It was uncanny how quickly her body moved in certain instances for just an instant. Her body seemed to randomly step up her already formidable speed for the length of time of a blink of an eye and then she would return to normal.
If Cammy wasn't so certain that she was moving at the exact same speed that Juri usually was she wouldn't have noticed it, as Sakura and Karin had not. But speed recognized speed, and that little aspect of fighting wasn't something that someone that wanted to kill you tried to sandbag in the middle of a fight. She'd watched her avoid attacks enough to know as much by now.
As soon as she got close enough, Cammy planted one hand on the ground and swung her legs outward in a whipping, swinging motion to try and kick Juri in the face. It missed of course, but it was meant to test out the point she was trying to prove; that Juri only moved at a nearly unreadable speed when she was dodging.
Sakura and Karin tried to attack her from both sides when she landed, but Juri jumped up again and lashed out with both legs something of a jumping split kick that hit both girls and stunned them. The moment her feet touched the ground again, she picked a target and followed up, "Senpuusha (Piercing Windmill)!" Cartwheeling multiple times in one jump, Juri's legs became veritable fan blades, and her target was Karin.
She had already been on her last legs to begin with, but taking six rapid kicks with such ill-intent behind them was simply all she could take after getting kicked around her own home for the better part of the night.
Karin's body flew into a nearby couch that she proceeded to overturn when she hit it, landing on the other side on the floor facedown.
A wide eyed Sakura got a close look at Juri's eyes afterwards and the satisfied smirk on her face. Sakura was not amused. Winning and losing fights were one thing. She'd long since accepted that at times she and her friends would get themselves beaten up, at times bad enough to lead to their defeats. She'd lost fights, Karin had lost fights, Cammy had lost fights. They all had.
Ibuki, Naruto, Batsu, Blanka, E. Honda, Dan (especially Dan), Chun-Li, Ken, Guile, and even Ryu had all gotten their asses kicked royally at one time or another. It was the nature of the beast that was martial arts and fighting in general, and the fact that they usually tended to drift toward large scale troubles that they could solve in some way.
But this was different. Someone was attacking Cammy for something she didn't have the slightest recollection of despite still having remorse for it, that didn't even affect the person attacking her in Juri Han. She destroyed her number one rival and close friend's home and could have possibly just killed her, and for what?
This was that dark side of martial arts that she despised. People with power tended to use that power to do whatever they wanted with complete disregard for their fellow man, no matter how destructive it was. And it was something that she was so tired of seeing and dealing with; this backwards survival of the fittest mindset that had led to tragedy after tragedy.
"You hypocrite!" Sakura's temper was finally lost, and she wasn't getting it back so easily. She swung her leg upward and then downward in an axe kick that Juri blocked with a raise of her own leg, "You want to destroy Cammy for what she did when she was unaware, but what about you? How many people have you hurt or killed on purpose knowing full well what you were doing? How many people did you kill, just today?"
"I never said I was in the right with what I want." Juri said dryly. She wasn't deluded enough into thinking that she was doing the right thing, nor did she try to or even wish to justify herself. The simple fact of the matter was… "I just don't care anymore. Do you understand? It can't possibly be that difficult a concept to get."
Just like that, something in Sakura's state of mind finally broke.
She had by far been the most normal out of every single one of her friends that fought. She was a good straight-A student with a well-to-do family that loved her and that she actively lived with. She abhorred the thought of hurting others outside of matches for sport and held a marked distaste for killing and death. She didn't even swear, ever! Even when it was appropriate, understandable, and forgivable to do so!
But after dealing with all sorts of freaks, criminals, and other assortments of explicitly horrible people since the age of thirteen that seemingly had no reason to commit evil deeds than other than 'just because they could since no one could stop them', along with secondhandedly being passed along stories of people close to her being harmed by these unsavory types, she had finally reached the boiling point.
"…Are you serious?" She asked in a dangerously low tone, very uncharacteristic for the usually cheerful and peppy pugilist.
"Perfectly serious." Juri had a rather insane glint in her eye, "As far as I'm concerned if I end up going to hell for what I've done, that will just give me the chance to stick it to those pathetic bastards that killed my family, and everyone that ever associated with them for all eternity!" She elevated her leg to kick Sakura's aside but found her attempt to light Sakura up with her opposite leg blocked when Sakura stopped her shin from rising with her own.
What the hell? Kicking her leg aside was supposed to throw her off whack. How'd she recover like that enough to block? Narrowing her eyes, Juri began trying to outpace Sakura's steps to mix her up enough to kick her lights out the way she had done to Karin.
Only to find that Sakura was able to step in time well enough to keep from being outpaced within striking range. She couldn't get an angle to attack from that Sakura would find awkward to defend from.
Seriously, what was going on? She had been kicking the stuffing out of all three of those girls, and now that the unassuming little goody-two-shoes girl had blown her stack she could do something like this? Interesting. Interesting but extremely aggravating.
Sakura's skin darkened slightly to a tone of a really good tan, but in the low light of the parlor it was hard to tell such. Cammy could see however, that underneath the scarf of Sakura's uniform top there was something red that she could see carved into the white shirt.
At first she figured it to be a gash or two that Sakura had suffered earlier. After all, she had seen her get kicked through a window just like everyone else had, but it wasn't bleeding. There wasn't any blood from it at all. In fact it seemed to be… glowing red?
Juri wasn't seeing or caring about any of that though. She was more concerned with the fact that Sakura was still stopping her from making a single move with nothing more than her positioning. Expert fighters couldn't and hadn't been able to stifle her attacks with that kind of movement.
It was like she was sliding across the ground fluidly, barely even moving her legs.
'Come on!' This abnormality was not lost on Juri. People didn't just match speed with her, even if she didn't use her trump card openly for attack, 'I'm not using this stupid eye for something as simple as finding me an opening! I should be able to do that alone! I don't need the Feng Shui Engine for that!'
But Sakura's steps were getting more aggressive as they darted all over the room in their little positioning dance, and she wasn't trying to waste her efforts with so much as a jab until she knew for certain that she had Juri and could hit her without fail. Sakura had all the time in the world. It was a game of who would be the more impatient of the two, and with friends like hers one thing that Sakura had plenty of was patience.
'I didn't come here to play hopscotch with Ryu's little tagalong protégé!' Juri thought to herself before finally losing it and flipping away to gain plenty of distance, "Fine! Let's see you dance your way out of this! Fuharenjin (Wind Breaking Chain Blades)!"
Juri's left eye was steadily glowing pink at this point instead of just a flash this time, and with that, pink ki radiated from her entire body as she started spinning and firing off kicks faster than anyone could keep track off. With every kick she threw, Juri shot pink ki disks in every direction, effectively turning Karin's first floor parlor into the terror dome.
Cammy dodged as many of them as she could, but there was no avoiding them all, and one caught her in the back of the leg, effectively hobbling her and forcing her to take two more that knocked her to the ground and wounded her flesh.
Sakura stood calmly in the face of the storm of deadly attacks, progressively getting angrier and angrier with every ki bolt that missed her. So much so that eventually she had to grit and bear her teeth, revealing slightly sharpened canines.
"She thinks of you as some kind of weakling." The dark whisper in her head was doing nothing to sate her mood, fueling it further along, "Thinking that you'll balk in the face of a ceaseless barrage. She can throw all the attacks she wants. She can send thousands, millions even. All you need is just one."
Sakura slammed her hands together and drew them back to begin building her ki. She felt incredible. It had never come so naturally before. Building up her normal oversized Hadoken came quickly, almost in an instant. But if it was that easy to build to her signature gigantic ki blast.
"Why stop there? You're better than this! If you're stronger show your strength! Make her regret ever coming here!"
With a short growl of exertion, Sakura pumped even more ki into her preparations, making it seem to grow even larger. It seemed just about to burst from between her hands, shifting between bright colors spontaneously.
Juri stopped her moves once Sakura's Hadoken started doing its best impression of the aurora borealis, 'What the hell?' She couldn't take the time to scrutinize just what was up with her opponent's pending attack, as pink lightning crackled around her left eye, forcing her to wince and close it in pain, 'A malfunction? I knew this thing wasn't strong enough to sustain my kind of attack style!'
The pain was debilitating.
And that Hadoken didn't look like something that she could deal with if she was handicapped by her hardware acting up on her. She had been overusing the Feng Shui Engine in all truthfulness though. There had been little need to use it purely for evasive action earlier in the fight. She merely felt like psyching out her prey, demeaning them before she put them in their places. Toying with them as it were.
These girls were a cut above though, even able to endure her for as long as they did once she got serious about putting them away. And now her time was up.
"Tch." Juri smirked despite the paralyzing pain in her head, "I guess I can see why Seth had you all listed as potential guinea pigs for his little science project. Later." Discretion was the better part of valor in this case, and overexertion would do little for her if she couldn't get away after getting the job done.
Killing Cammy was just a personal touch that she could get back to any time. Other than that little optional objective she'd already done the portion of her job that involved the girls. Thus she kicked her way through the remainder of one of the parlor windows and took off into the open land around Karin's mansion.
Sakura was alarmed at first. Juri had been winning. Handily winning. And then she suddenly took off, right before Sakura chose to mount her counteroffensive? Her dark side was not a fan of that outcome at all, "This is not a victory! We were beaten by a coward who runs! A true battle isn't complete until a pulse stops! She will not outrun this blast! Fire and kill her!"
"Tenmetsu Shinkuu Hado-!" Sakura was about to shoot her Hadoken when she stopped herself from doing so. Cammy and Karin were down, and she could feel her own power. If she let her ki technique go it wasn't just going to go straight. It was going to go everywhere. The only safe place would be behind her and she knew it.
"It doesn't matter, it is worth it! That woman is the embodiment of everything you've come to hate about fighting; doing so only for the sake of destruction! End her life!"
Okay, that was definitely not her talking. She wasn't going to shoot the strongest goddamn Shinkuu Hadoken that she'd ever created, even counting full power in training, if it would kill anyone, especially her friends by accident.
So why was it so hard to put it away? Why was it so difficult to suppress this impulse and the boost that came with it? She didn't want it to begin with! It just came to her when Juri had gotten her to see red, and now she was internally fighting tooth and nail to keep herself from obliterating her friends and the entire north end of Karin's home. Destruction for destruction's sake, just for kicks so she could keep that good feeling that she was getting.
Just like what she hated most, and what originally set her off to begin with.
With that extra push she somehow placed all of that absurd power away, even though it hurt as if she were having chest pains, and she dropped to the ground clutching at her heart. The urging in her head that had been there before was gone, and the mother of all migraines remained in its place.
'Oh man…' Sakura thought to herself, slowly laying down on her side on the floor. Even when it was stark cold and covered in debris it still seemed more comfortable than any cushioned surface at the moment, 'I don't… what was that?' Going to sleep never felt so good.
Cammy lay on the floor, nursing her wounds from Juri's last berserk attack that tore what was little was left of the parlor apart. Her right thigh had a pretty decent gash in it, as did her right arm and a shallow injury lay on the left side of her body, cutting through her leotard.
She observed Sakura's skin regaining its usual fair tone and from her point of view she could now better see what had been cut into the back of her uniform. It appeared to be some sort of kanji, but she wasn't a master of reading them, knowing enough to comfortably operate day-to-day in Japan. This particular one was incomprehensible to her since she never needed to use it before, thus she couldn't tell what it stood for.
This entire situation had been bad news from start to finish. So now there was someone in town with enough power to handle her, Karin, and Sakura simultaneously and make it look easy the entire time, "We hit her once. One time. And she got back up." And proceeded to continue beating the daylights out of them.
Whatever Sakura had done at the end to deter Juri, as odd and as alarming as it was to see her charge up the most unstable Hadoken that she had ever borne witness to, it had to be counted as a blessing tonight.
XxX
(Moments Ago – Rural Village in Kerala, India)
"I'm sorry, but I didn't hit the floodgates on purpose." Ibuki said, sitting in the middle of a doorway in Dhalsim's home after returning from a successful mission, "I told you. There was this lady named Viper that fought me in the control room and I knocked her onto the panel. It was completely unavoidable."
"Yeah, well we still got caught in a gigantic wave from the released water." Batsu replied, sitting around in his boxers with a slightly damp towel over his head, "Our phones are officially dead."
"Mine was dead when that tank blew me away." Naruto commented, raising a hand out of turn, "I'm on burners these days anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me."
Like Batsu, Naruto was also in his skivvies, getting some injuries from the tank explosion bandaged by Dhalsim's wife Sari. They'd be going home in the morning once Dhalsim had rested himself enough to take them on a return trip to Japan, but in the meantime he was still sleeping to restore his energy.
It had been quite the day. Just what kind of company was S.I.N.? Weapons developers had shady reputations to begin with, but everything that had happened today set off every logical klaxon in his heart. That dam couldn't have been sanctioned. It wasn't possible that something like that would be allowed to happen. In parts of the world like this bodies of water were invaluable, and to just block one off for monetary gain wasn't going to happen just like that, popping up almost overnight the way Dhalsim had said it had.
A grunt escaped Naruto's mouth in a bit of discomfort at the tightening of his wraps, but a small smile to Sari let her know that he was just fine. He tried to insist earlier that he didn't even need to waste their bandages, subtly alluding that the Kyuubi would have him all better by sunrise, but she would have none of that.
As he started to rest and ponder where exactly they were all going to sleep that night, a jolt came to the back of his mind that forced his pupils to momentarily dilate in shock. He had to stop himself from running outside in the direction of east northeast.
Was all of the incense burning in that place screwing with his head or did he sense Satsui no Hadou? That was impossible. No one else felt it. If Akuma had been there and openly projecting his power the feeling would have gotten him and everyone else in the village to start cold sweating. It couldn't have been Ryu having one of his episodes either, because he was in Australia doing the ronin thing at last check.
"Just because something is far away doesn't necessarily mean there's a range to sensing it." Kyuubi informed him upon listening to his thoughts as the feeling of that dark energy had gotten its attention as well, "We were stained with that taint for the better part of the last year before you cast its influence out of your dark side. Needless to say you are vastly familiar with this 'Satsui no Hadou'. You are extra-sensitive to it due to what has happened to us in the past and because of my origin."
Yes, because the Kyuubi was allegedly a chakra beast of malevolence, so it would have to know evil things when it felt it. That was why he knew for sure that Ryu was still in Australia at last check, because he felt it to the south a matter of weeks ago.
XxX
(Aohura City, Japan – Genhanten)
Ever the nitpicking old man that he was, Gen was spending the near midnight hours of the evening going through Sasuke's record books for the restaurant so that he would have something to get on the boy's case about tomorrow to antagonize him.
He needed the distraction since his little friend Akira had gotten beaten up rather badly by someone that apparently had come to see what abilities he had to offer. He had more of a chip on his shoulder than usual because of the run-in with the woman Juri Han that he'd been unable to locate thus far.
While reading, Gen's head tilted up as if he'd heard something, but it was dead silent inside of Sasuke's room and office that he'd taken over for the duration of his stay. He hadn't heard anything.
With his long life experience in the martial arts, Gen was intimately knowledgeable about the supernatural and had developed something of a sixth sense for the powers of others. He had sensed something that had occurred just outside of the town limits.
"Feh." Gen said with a touch of bored antipathy as he touched a fingertip to his tongue before turning a page, "Another one? That makes three now."
Stupid Satsui no Hadou.
XxX
(United States of America)
In California it was early in the morning as opposed to nighttime elsewhere across the Pacific.
Ken Masters' day had already been going for an hour and a half since 5 a.m.
And in the middle of his morning exercises outside of his mansion he had to stop and look west at a sudden spiking feeling that caught his attention and put a frown on the usually good-natured fighter's face.
"That was probably Ryu training again right?" He said as if he were trying to convince himself. In the past he'd felt flashes of Satsui no Hadou and figured that it was Ryu in Australia trying to train where he couldn't hurt anyone if he lost control. And over time it steadily started to settle. This did not feel like that, "…God I sure hope so. For Christ's sake, Ryu and Akuma were enough."
XxX
(Northern Territory, Australia)
The Australian desert was extremely harsh, and just what Ryu was looking for in regards to a new challenge in his training. Simply travelling through that place on foot by himself was an ordeal. But once he made it all the way north to Darwin he'd be taking a boat back to Japan for a short while.
Even the night wasn't a time for too much rest and relaxation as he sat in front of a fire and stared at the flickering flames.
Out of nowhere he turned toward seemingly nothing in the direction of the north, 'Akuma!' He thought to himself before carefully analyzing what he was feeling, "No. It wasn't strong enough or refined enough to be Akuma's. It was closer to his in the past. Very raw and untrained.
Ever since being defeated by Ken he endeavored to overcome the control that the Satsui no Hadou had over him in dire situations. He was not going to allow his own power to consume him, nor was he going to allow it to change who he was fundamentally either. Akuma's 'advice' be damned, he would find something beyond that power that would not force him to relinquish his very beliefs.
But maybe he needed to make a run up north until he caught wind of just what that burst of dark power had been. He'd have to hurry up his training sabbatical and get to the ports quicker than planned.
XxX
(Gobi Desert, Mongolia)
The abusive cold was nothing for the 'Supreme Master of the Fist' to sit through calmly and patiently.
No amount of freezing cold wind blowing sand onto him could break his will, even when it buried him fully at the center of a newly shifted dune. It simply wasn't worth his time to respond to. The elements could not kill him no matter how extreme, sub-zero as it was.
Endurance training aside, Akuma's crimson eyes popped open, the sudden presence of his active ki aura blowing all of the sand around him away for hundreds of yards. Just as he started reacting to the distant feeling that he had been picking up in Japan he simply scoffed and remained seated.
"Another potential user." He said to himself, "The potential for a final battle is lesser than Ryu's however. It is of no relevance… yet."
Every Satsui no Hadou user had the ability to grow to his level of power, if only they chose to embrace it and everything that came with it as he did. There were only two people in Japan that had even the smallest attachment to the style that spawned Satsui no Hadou. One was a teenage girl that he'd seen trying to tend to Uzumaki Naruto after he'd lain waste to him in Tokyo. The other was some loudmouthed fool that his brother Gouken had rejected from his school before his training was even halfway complete.
To him it was obvious which of the two it had to be. The latter was less than dirt in his opinion, and the girl had actual potential to be extremely powerful in her own right.
Either way it wasn't worth his notice. She would probably never be strong enough to provide him with the challenging battle to the death that he craved at his very core. But things could always change.
XxX
(Mt. Mikagura, Japan)
The night sky atop a mountain in the country was quite the calming and relaxing sight indeed. There was just something about all of the stars and clear constellations that could ease a calamitous soul and a troubled mind.
Not that there was anything troubled about this man.
Sitting out front on the wooden floor outside of a small, slightly dilapidated dojo was an elderly man. An extremely muscular old man that professional bodybuilders would have been jealous of. He was balding with long white hair trailing around the side and back of his head tied into a single ponytail with a prayer bead, a thick white mustache and beard connected to this. Around his neck he wore more prayer beads and dressed in white pants, a navy blue sleeveless gi with only a single shoulder and in place of a belt holding it closed he wore a thick rope.
"Satsui no Hadou again eh?" An old yet stern and strong voice from the man said as he stroked his beard thoughtfully and looked to the southwest. It was a bit of an alarming trend. His student Ryu had been dealing with it on his own for the last two years, and now another person showed signs of manifesting it as well, "Well I believe this is a sign that I've been recovering from Akuma for long enough."
With that he stood up and headed inside of his home and dojo to gather some things for a trip. It had been so since Ryu and Ken had been young men training there with him, and it had been a rather long time since Akuma had struck him down in battle.
Who said that the Shun Satsu Goku was impossible to survive? Sure, it put him into a coma for two years, but that was more because of his own mistake in countering the attack than anything else.
Either way, rumors of his demise had been greatly exaggerated.
"I can't fault Ken for burying me." He muttered to himself like an old timer as he put his travel belongings in a rucksack to carry with him, "For all he knew I really had been dead. Digging myself up was a bit of a pain though."
He wondered how the two of them were progressing though. Now that he was leaving the mountain for the first time in decades he'd have to pop in on them. They were 23 when they left several years ago and he was curious as to what kind of men they had grown to be since leaving his tutelage.
But first he would go to where he felt that latest surge of Satsui no Hadou. Who knew what he would find there? The only two he'd trained in his style happened to be Ken and Ryu. Dan never came close to finishing the training. So who else would have the potential to use it?
That was what the journey was for though, to learn of such a thing.
Placing a straw hat onto his head, he left the house barefoot and set out down the mountain and on his way, with no regard for the time of night it was. He was far too old to be concerned with such a thing. It was time to go wandering for Gouken.
XxX
(Unknown Location)
Dr. Senoh walked through the nearly empty halls of the laboratory that was now his place of employment until he reached an elevator and used his key card to hit the button for the top floor. Unlike with his previous boss in Bison, Seth chose not to keep his strongholds out of the public eye. It was safer by his count to have his places of study in a place where everyone could see it.
Putting your base or laboratory or what have you in the middle of nowhere was nice for when privacy was needed in large quantities of space, but unless space or some other element that you couldn't get outside of a city wasn't what you needed putting any of those things out where no one could find it had multiple weaknesses.
Most notably that if you couldn't let anyone know where it was, if something happened to the property to destroy it there was nothing that you could do if you were unable to get to the people that did it. If everyone knew where it was, and one rogue that discovered something discreet decided to do something about it, you could bring the law enforcement of the world down on their heads in the case of S.I.N.
They were a legitimate world-reaching business after all with prominent armed organizations all over the world taking a stake in their wares. Who was going to take the word of a sole person or group above theirs? For a gun that shot straighter, faster, with more ammunition and less cost, or for a tank with full 360 degree flawless mobility and an energy-based cannon there wasn't much of anything most governments in the world wouldn't do for them if they asked for it.
They were sitting on that oh so valuable private contract making arms for a sole country for such a rainy day, but until then they were equal opportunity, and they were keeping all of the best toys under wraps for themselves.
Speaking of which.
Senoh knocked on the door of his current boss and received a strong 'enter' for his efforts. Upon doing so, he was gifted with the sight of a grand C.E.O.'s office with a premium view of the city around them. The entire floor was his abode and place of work.
And it was there he saw Seth himself.
He was the only person that had access to that floor, or to Seth himself. The reason for that was due to the fact that his mind and resourcefulness made him a valuable commodity to S.I.N.'s projects, and also due to the fact that Senoh posed absolutely no threat to him whatsoever.
Seth could put a gun in Senoh's hand, guide it to his own chest, and even help him pull the damn trigger himself and Senoh still could not end his life. He was just as intimidating as Bison was, for different reasons. Bison would kill you for sneezing out of turn. Seth had a taste for the more clandestine methods of control. He didn't enjoy getting his hands dirty on what he called 'lesser beings'.
Apparently every human that took breath was a lesser being.
Walking around the vast penthouse floor, he eventually found Seth staring out over the city before him. It was 4 a.m., but he simply never slept. Sleeping was something that humans required. Rest was something humans required. He didn't need such things. No food, no water, no form of sustenance whatsoever.
The muscularly built Seth stood head, shoulders, and chest over Senoh. Standing taller over him than Bison ever did. And as the head of the company he usurped control of, he was dressed the part in black dress pants and a black dress shirt with a red handkerchief under his collar. He had a white vest, burgundy gloves, and burgundy boots that rode up just underneath his knees.
His eyes shifted colors between red, blue, black, and white, all in solid, dead, emotionless colors. He was entirely bald… and his skin was chrome.
Needless to say he did not run S.I.N. out in public. But he was synthetically created for a purpose that had nothing to do with his appearance or what he wound up becoming. In actuality he was never supposed to gain autonomy and have any sort of control over his destiny.
"Speak Senoh." Seth said, still staring out the window with his arms behind his back, "You said you have reports for me."
"Yes, of course." The flummoxed scientists said before clearing his throat, "Juri Han has apparently begun her actual mission objectives in finding apt talent possible to be used for the BLECE Project, and Crimson Viper has informed us that the dam base in India has been compromised. Operations there are being shut down and they are currently preparing to move everything out by tomorrow evening. The prototype tank has been destroyed in battle. The Tanden Engine was a greater weak spot in the design than we anticipated."
"I told you as much when you started on that project." Seth said as if he were telling a child that something inconsequential to him wasn't a good idea, almost jokingly, "The Tanden Engine isn't meant for anything larger-scale than what it is already used for."
"But sir, a limitless supply of energy. Can you imagine the applications? What kind of things we can create if we can harness it for more than-?"
"Of course I can, but this just proves what I already knew to begin with. I'll repeat myself. It isn't meant for anything larger-scale than what it is already used for. I know."
That was that. Seth had vision but he also knew full well when he was reaching for something that couldn't be obtained. In the tank, the Tanden Engine not only allowed the tank full mobility due to how it was placed at the bottom to roll, it was the entire power source for the tank. It gave life to the tank's powerful engines, it even provided the ki that was blasted from the main gun.
But it was unstable and unsafe. Anything larger or smaller than the original design was imperfect and dangerous, and with what caused the Tanden Engine to work, one of any size going critical was disastrous.
"Enough about that." Seth insisted, "Tell me more about the BLECE Project."
Grateful for the shifting in gears in the course of the conversation, Senoh did just that, "Well Juri can't finish her mission and return with the data she's gathered quickly enough. We tried putting what we've already worked out to test on subjects in Brazil. The results were rather… unsavory to say the least."
"So I've heard." Seth said with an amused chuckle, "Exploding pressure points? Even if we did take the design of BLECE beyond what it is now for what it is truly intended for, I would like to think that the form of it that we have now would make a grand weapon that we could make a substantial sum from."
What did he care what it would do? BLECE wouldn't work at all, finished or in its imperfect bio weapon form, on anyone that could actively manipulate their ki. It wasn't like it could come back to hurt him or any of his plans if he sold it to any radicals and they foolishly tried to turn it on him.
"It is an intriguing effect." Senoh admitted. Bison definitely would have loved that little aspect of it, "But I'm still infinitely more invested in the finished product, or what we intend for it to do. Imagine it, any human being in the world can have their inner energy available to them with the application of BLECE. You could do anything you wished with that sort of power at your disposal."
"What I wish for is to achieve my purpose." Seth said, looking at his gloved hands before making fists from them, "What I was created for was to rule above all else. I can and will succeed where Bison failed, because intentional or not when he deigned for my creation, he made me better than him. Unlike him, reliant on the Psycho Drive to give him power that transcends mankind, I need no such thing. I am the key. And BLECE will be the catalyst to my ascent."
White and black energy formed around his fists as his eyes glowed blue. He turned around to face Senoh and the scientist began stepping away. Even though Seth never overtly tried to intimidate anyone to get what he wanted it mattered not. He was still an eerie presence, "Sir?"
"I will rule all." Seth said, looking directly into Senoh's eyes with a confident smile on his face, "Anything of use to me will be assimilated into my efforts one way or another, and everything else will otherwise be subjugated or destroyed."
And that's that for now folks. The second half of a doubleheader of chapters. Imagine all of that stuck together in one blistering chapter.
This is still the most fun thing that I'm currently writing for some reason. Unlike two other stories I do, this one doesn't feel like work at all, which is why chapters for it come so easily.
So aside from that, guess what possible major life shift I might be making in the next year? I might be trying to join the army when I graduate if I can't find a job. Why the hell not?
From what I've gleaned from my old man that did it back during Desert Storm times, I'll basically wake up at the crack of dawn, train my ass off from sunup to sundown, get yelled at, and learn to shoot things better than I already do before they give me a job doing communications stuff that I already went to college to learn how to do (if I test for it well enough).
…Basically that was everything I was doing already anyway, only cranked up several notches, and then I'll be getting paid for it. Also I won't have to emasculate myself looking all over Virginia, northern North Carolina, eastern West Virginia, and possibly Ohio and Pennsylvania for someone to hire me fresh out of college in a shite job market.
Yeah… I'm really thinking about doing that. I don't even care about the potentially getting shot at part. I've already been shot, in the side, so I popped that cherry already. I'm sure that'll change if it ever starts happening regularly since PTSD and some of the wounds I've seen guys have are no joke, but we'll burn that bridge if we come to it. I won't be infantry, I'll be a comm. guy… hopefully.
Sure the U.S. Government will own me body and soul, but how is that any worse than Radford University owning me while I work my skin white trying to pay back their loans until I'm 30? At least this won't potentially fuck up my credit and I'll actually be doing something I believe in. Every armed forces guy I've ever met has been cool, and if it was good enough for my dad it's good enough for me too.
Of course this is all pending me not getting a regular job for some time after I graduate… so this is all going to take quite a long while. But I'm definitely not against it .
Growing up folks. Twenty-one years old and not getting any younger you hear? Kenchi out.