Disclaimer! I do not own any of the KOF related you see here. I am just borrowing their characters and plots to use as my personal puppets for a while…

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KOF: New Blood

Chapter 9: Empty NESTS Syndrome

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Once again, the SSC went to their rooms. Though there was a slight air of disappointment, it was overwhelmed by a sense of pride of their accomplishments. That and they were too damn tired to care about such stuff at this moment. It was the middle of the night when they got back, and all everyone wanted to do was sleep.

It was early that next morning that Irena was awoken to the sound of her phone vibrating. She knew that could only mean it was time for her to go and call the final round of the tournament. Sighing, she turned off the phone and got up. It was way too early for the rest of the Shin Sekai Chitsujo to be awake. With her team out of the tournament, all she could do was provide them with the means to go back home.

"I hate having to do this to them." She held her face in her hands. The sad fact was that she probably wouldn't see them again. It hadn't been but a short time ago that Irena happened to run across Raven and his brother at the mall in the middle of her search. Over that time, she had grown close to all of them; Krysten's shyness and determination, Zyon's boastful but kind attitude, Xion's strength and willingness to fight through anything……and Raven…

"My job has to be done." She got up and stretched for a bit. "Unfortunately, my loyalty to my organization is more important to my loyalty to my team."

Quickly, she washed herself and got dressed. It took her only a half hour to pack her stuff up, and in no time, she was ready to leave. Irena wanted so much to knock on the doors of the guys and tell them that she was leaving, but it was important that she get there early to make the final adjustments to her boss's grand plan for the tournament. So, taking some paper from the table next to her bed, she scribbled down a note. Irena left her room and slipped it under the door of the room that the Kirishima's were currently sleeping in. She could feel herself starting to tear up, but she quickly regained her composure.

"Goodbye..." She placed her hand on the door in front of her, letting it linger for a moment before she continued down the hallway.

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A few hours later, Raven was awoken to the sounds of knocking.

"Wakey wakey…." Zyon said through the door. "Breakfast is ready, but I can't seem to get Irena to come out of her room."

"Just let her sleep. I'm pretty sure she's was just as exhausted as the rest of us." Raven said. "We'll bring her some food up for when she wakes…." Raven noticed the piece of paper near the door with Irena's name on it. "Actually, it looks like she has left us a note." He commented as he let Zyon in the room.

Zyon picked up the paper, and scanned through it quickly. After a moment, he handed it to Raven. "You probably should read this."

Raven gave Zyon a confused look, but read anyway:

Hey guys. I'm really, really sorry that I can't be there to see you off, but important business with my sponsor came up earlier than I have hoped. I kinda promised them I would oversee the final match in the tournament taking place tomorrow. Believe me, I want to stay and have at least one last day with you.

There is something I want to leave you with, however. I know that most of you probably feel bitter about losing yesterday. You shouldn't be angry yourself; you fought a very good fight against the Fatal Fury team. I'm sure you would agree with me that you almost won the match, and considering that team's reputation, that is something you can be proud of.

Anyway, I've informed the hotel to hand you your plane tickets on the way out. It should be leaving this evening, giving you enough time for you to enjoy the town one last time before you go back home. I don't really know how things will turn out next year, but as far as I'm concerned, you should come back. But I don't know if I'll be there to cheer you on if that happens. If that's the case, then I will miss you dearly. I certainly wish you the best. – Irena.

"So this is how it ends?" Raven said to himself as he re-read the note. While Raven was thankful that she didn't just up and leave without telling anyone, the fact that their time with her ended so abruptly irked him a little bit.

"Well, what can we do?" Zyon shrugged. "Our run in the tournament is dead and buried. She's our representative, but she's also an employee of the sponsor. We can't forget that."

"Yeah, you're right. But when you think about it…" Raven scratched his head. "We never did learn who that 'sponsor' is."

"Knowing the history of this tournament, it's probably someone evil person who's using the tournament for his or her evil means. They never are successful, though."

"Aren't you at least curious?" Raven continued. "I mean, for all we know, she could be in danger…."

"Of what? Getting fired because we lost? Come on, man." Zyon shook his head. "Listen, I understand that you have sort of a 'thing' for this girl, but we shouldn't really be getting involved in whatever she or her 'sponsor' is planning."

Raven knew that Zyon was right. What could he do? Nobody knew where the finals where taking place at, and at this point, even if they did, by time they managed to find the place, the match would be over and she would be gone. He needed to get his head together…wait a minute…

"Did you just say I had a 'thing' for Irena?" Raven said angrily.

"Wow…does it usually take that long to process words in your brain?" Zyon said. "I was just joking."

"Hmph. Whatever you say."

"If it makes any difference, I kinda wanted to give our girl something for her trouble before she left, so I'm not feeling too good about this either. I would like to see her again too, of course, but who knows where she'll be…" Zyon smiled. "It'll be okay. Despite what she says, we'll see her again."

"I guess you're right about that." Raven sighed. He was getting hungry, and every moment standing there was time that could have been spent gorging on free food. "Do you think we should wake the others?"

"If they were really hungry, they would be up by now." Zyon said as he made his way down the hall. "Now get dressed and be down there or there won't be enough left for you."

"We'll see about that!" Raven shouted, completely ignoring the other people that were still sleeping in their rooms.

---

After causing a mess of the breakfast station, the entire SSC decided to go out and wander around town until it was time for them to leave. After a short trip to the mall, they more or less walked around for the next hour or so, occasionally stopping for a store one of them wanted to go in. Raven had spotted the cat from yesterday wandering around somewhere, so he had separated from the group to go chase it around for a bit.

"This sucks." Krysten spoke up. "We've been walking around for a while, and there's not a thing to do around here."

"I guess all the good things happen at night." Xion added. "But by that time, we'll be already on our way home."

"Speaking of home, I wonder how our friends going to react when we tell them we fought the Fatal Fury team." Raven inquired.

"Considering what school I'm in, they probably wouldn't be too surprised." Zyon looked around the area. "Their star student is a pop star psychic, after all."

"Don't half the underclassmen at your school worship you, Zyon?" Xion asked.

"And all of them are girls, not surprisingly." Krysten added.

"Well, when you finally get over your inherent inability to have social contact with women, you'll find that you have a few fans as well." Zyon snickered while Krysten gave him a dirty look.

About a good while after that, Krysten and Xion had disappeared into a random store, the former bugging the latter about buying him some kind of item as a souvenir, as he had done with every stop they had made. Zyon was left waiting for his teammates to come back.

"Hey Zyon!" The smiling form of Terry Bogard appeared from the corner. "Looks like you're still here. Where are the other guys at?"

"Who knows?" Zyon replied. "Just aimlessly wandering around, as usual. This town is pretty boring during the day."

"I wouldn't say it's boring, but things are a bit livelier at night from what I saw." Terry looked around a bit. It was during that sentence that a thought came to Zyon's mind.

"Hey, have you heard about where you're going to be fighting at next?" He suddenly asked.

"Hmm…now that you mention it, we did get word where the final match will be held an hour ago. It's at some kind of abandoned area in the middle of nowhere."

"I shouldn't be surprised that it's being held at such a ridiculous place." Zyon frowned a bit. Terry gave a small laugh.

"You get used to it, after a while. Anyway, it's a pretty long drive from here to there, so we'll be leaving tomorrow. "

Zyon nodded. "Well, thanks for the info, Terry. I need to go find where the others had run off to."

"No problem. Remember, next time you're in Southtown, we're going to have a rematch, okay?"

"Sure thing." Zyon said as he broke into a run.

It didn't take long for him to find Raven walking towards him, cat in his arms. It was a humorous sight to see.

"Sorry about that, Zyon. This was one hard cat to try and keep still." Raven commented. The cat seemed to have taken a liking for him and followed the two as they walked.

"Listen. I just talked to Terry, and he told me that the final match is taking place quite a while from here, and that they're leaving tomorrow."

"So, why are you telling me this?"

"I have a feeling that we should try to see her again." Zyon said. "My intuition is bugging me, and I know everyone else could say the same thing."

Raven perked up a little. "Really? How are we going to get to the fighting area?"

"We're going to tail the Fatal Fury team, of course." Zyon gave his 'I got this covered' smile, which usually meant something strange was about to happen.

"And how are we going to follow them? We don't have a car."

"Leave that to me. Our main concern right now is the fact that we'll need some place to stay for one more night." Zyon stated. It was technically almost time for them to pack up their stuff and get ready to go home, and trying to make a deal with the staff to get an extra day for free was almost out of the question.

"Maybe we should wait till we talk about this with the others to worry about that." Raven pointed to the store where Krysten and Xion were coming out of.

"Yeah, you're probably right." Zyon grimaced at the thought of their response.

---

Irena drove for about two hours down a very long stretch of road. It was a little boring, but it gave her time to clear her head. She still had quite a bit of stuff to prepare for, and she needed to focus on that for the time being.

She pulled up to what seemed to be an abandoned building. After parking her car, she went up to the door, which was locked with a keypad. Pressing in the special 5 digit code, Irena unlocked the door and walked into the surprisingly active building. Being out in the middle of nowhere, it would have been unlikely to arouse suspicion unless you were stupid enough to try and sneak on the property, but nobody had ever made it in and out without getting some part of their body blown to pieces and them bleeding to death on the ground.

The inside of the building was very active. After a few flight of steps, she arrived at the main area. Various screens and monitors were placed on the walls, showing maps and data and stuff that Irena sometimes had difficulty understanding. There were several people stationed at various desks and sections of the large room doing whatever work that was assigned, from filing reports to calling this and that group. Everyone had their part to play, but Irena couldn't say she envied them.

Past that place was a door that led to a hallway lined with smaller offices, for meetings and stuff. But the main room she needed to go to was still a few floors down. She quickly hurried to the elevator, and after another set of identity verification stuff that Irena hated to do, it slowly started to go down.

Finally, after a few minutes of mindless waiting, Irena finally reached her destination. The door opened to a dark room filled with various screens. A man was seated in front of them, but his back was turned to her.

"Good evening, Irena." The man said without turning around. "It's been a while since I have seen you in person."

"Krizalid, I've come to give you my assistance." She said as she stepped closer. "Now that my first assignment is over, I'm ready to help out in any way I can in the final phase of the plan."

"Ah, yes. It's getting close to time for our big 'reveal'." The man stood up, his silhouette standing out against the bright screens behind him. "To your credit, however, your team was very impressive. From what I have seen, their Battle Ability was almost on par with some of the more experienced teams."

Irena couldn't help but smile. "I did the research, of course. I wouldn't waste your time just putting some random nobodies in an important program like this."

"And you did a very good job. It's a shame though, I would have liked to see how well they would have interacted with K' in the finals."

"Speaking of which, how is our boy, K'? I can't seem to contact him."

"Stubborn as always. Don't worry; he knows where to go when the time comes." Krizalid's form slowly started to move towards Irena. Most of his face was covered by the collar of the huge trenchcoat he wore. "One more thing before you leave; you have talked to my sister, right?"

"Briefly, yes. She doesn't seem to have any intention on ever rejoining the organization." She said with a slight hint of regret.

He sighed as he held a hand to his head. "I don't know what it is going to take to try to convince her. She should learn to listen to her brother."

Irena opted to stay quiet about the subject. "So, is there anything I can do?"

The man placed his hand on top of her head. "A few things, but nothing too complicated. I need you at your best for tomorrow. Don't overwork yourself."

The girl turned a red in the face. "Yes sir."

---

The SSC went out to lunch, where Zyon and Raven explained the entire situation to Xion and Krysten, and gave them what little of their plan that they have managed to cobble together.

"We're going to purposely miss our flight home and follow another team for two or so hours just because you want to talk to our rep?" Xion was upset. He wasn't comfortable leaving his home for that long, so he really wanted to go back to Japan. "Have you lost your minds?"

"If I had a dollar for every time you said that…" Zyon said to himself. "She's part of this team as much as the rest of us. I know it's seems like this is just some kind of random act of stupidity on my part, and believe me, you're probably used to them, but I know for sure that there's something going on behind the scenes involving her."

"Raven, you're not going to go along with this, are you?" Krysten was almost begging his brother to say no. "I wanna go home…"

"Krysten, I know that. I want to go home too, but this is something that will be eating away in the back of my mind for all of eternity if I don't. She just left so….abruptly. At the very least, I want to part ways on something other than a letter."

"Well if you want to get yourself in serious trouble, that's your problem. We'll be going home." Xion said, but Zyon just smiled smugly.

"I doubt it, Xio-kun. I took our plane tickets and burned them to ashes." He stated matter-of-factly. Xion gave him the darkest look that he could. Krysten put his head in his hands in frustration. "Don't worry about getting home; I had my sister wire me some money over here to buy some new tickets once we're done."

"Fine. So what do we do? We don't have a car, or a place to stay for the night."

"I can get another, albeit less extravagant, hotel room for us. And as for the car, I already got that covered, as I said." Zyon said. "Speaking of which, you better get your stuff from the hotel. I need to go get our ride." He quickly left the diner.

It was an hour later that the SSC packed their bags and left the hotel for good. Outside the hotel, they waited for their friend to return. Xion still looked kinda peeved, while Raven and Krysten were just tired of people that were walking in the hotel looking at them.

Suddenly, a car pulled up in front of them. Zyon's head peeked from the other side of the car.

"I think we can fit our stuff in this one." He said as he opened the trunk. "Let's get out of here."

So the SSC loaded their stuff in and soon they were driving away.

"So, where did you get the car, Zyon?" Krysten reluctantly asked.

"Well…." He tried to figure out how exactly to word it. "You'll be surprised how a little electric shock can screw up a car's power locks."

It took the others a few seconds for them to get what Zyon was trying to say.

"Wait, you mean you stole this car?!" Krysten panicked.

"Well, 'stole' is such a harsh way of putting it. After all, this car was already abandoned to begin with." Zyon said, trying to keep Krysten from jumping out of the car in a panic. "It just needed a new battery and some 'power' to get it to start up. Granted, I could have easily stolen a car, but since we're probably going to be driving this on a public road for almost two or three hours straight, having police on our tail wouldn't be proactive to our situation, would it?"

"I guess not…" Krysten slouched in his seat, somewhat relieved. "Something tells us that tomorrow is going to be a long day."

"Maybe…but assuming that we don't wind up dead by the end of the day tomorrow, it's going to be well worth it."

"You say that, but you and Raven still haven't come up with an actual plan." Xion said.

"To be honest, I have one actually forming together right now, but of course, I'll need everyone's input." Zyon did a sharp turn. "I'm supposing you'll be assisting us, right?"

"Only because I don't want to have to explain to Tera why her brother got herself killed." He sighed. "As your best friend, I'm obligated to go with you; And Krysten is obligated to go with Raven since he is his brother, so we don't really have much of a choice."

"'Obligated' being the key word." Krysten said under his breath.

"Don't be like that. I already said that I won't let anyone hurt you." Raven turned around to give his little brother a comforting smile.

"And if Irena is truly a part of our team, we're obligated to help her right?" Zyon continued. "So let's stop arguing and take the time to get some rest. We'll probably have to do some serious battling tomorrow."

Raven could only nod his head in agreement. It's was going to be quite the eventful day tomorrow.

Unbeknownst to them, the SSC's role in the final day of the King of Fighters tournament was going to be a little bigger than they had expected.

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Shikkoku: Besides the fact that I completed this whole chapter in little more than a week, there's nothing really notable to talk about on this chapter. I'm in for the long haul until this story is over, so don't worry about any more long gaps between updates right now.

Notes:

This chapter is primarily a transitional chapter, a way to get them into the main plot of the tournament. It took me about 3 days to figure out a reasonable explanation of them getting involved in the 'Kyo Clone' plan, and I still might improve on that one.

Speaking of Kyo, he'll be making an appearance shortly. He's my favorite character, there's no way I could leave him out. Iori, however, probably won't be seen till the still unnamed Act 2. Probably.

Next Chapter: The SSC go forth with their hastily put together plan. What exactly is Irena's role? Who is this mysterious boss (like you don't already know), and why is Whip following them?

Until Next Time, Sayonara.