Wild ride today, folks. Ken is getting it in the soul and the body. Again.
Ken sat on the bike by the time, the signal came. He slumped in relief yet stiffened in discomfort at the message that followed; other women trapped in the mansion. An hour earlier, he had ditched the disguise and crouched behind a dumpster to stop himself from crumbling into pieces.
A persistent sticky feeling crawled all over his body. It was one of those things that made him want to aggressively scratch himself, rake nails over every surface until it bled, and then scratch some more. He wanted to rip off his own skin and pull out his guts, he couldn't stand it.
Without his life preserver that took the shape of Juri, he had been staring at the animals that took her away with nothing to support him mentally. He had gazed at the auction, goaded by Belger to buy one of the blonde women paraded on stage like a dog before the old man retired for the night. His stomach had bottomed out at the sight of children being ogled at like pieces of meat.
It had been soul-crushing. Like a sandstorm that carried all the evils of man hitting him and ripping flesh from bones. It almost made Ken pine for the olden days of Shadaloo. He knew they were evil and that was enough. Back then, he didn't have to watch the malice and breathe in its fumes while it melted his organs into pools of gore and rotting blood.
Still, for the sake of his sanity, for the sake of the woman sitting in the middle of this, for the sake of his son, Ken placed a call. One of two. The first was easier to make than the last as the fear of black tar pouring out of him caused him to stammer through the address of the auction house.
The ride to Belger's abode was anxious as it was majestic. In the black of night, the forest seemed like a realm of darkness without form between a few lazy rays from nearby residential areas. From what Juri had inferred, this area belonged to the richest members of society. The type of people who'd buy mansions without a second thought; the likes of which Eliza had joked about owning one day. They were both homely; Eliza from peaceful suburbia in Maine. Ken raised to be responsible with his money.
Flaunting wealth wasn't in their blood.
For a man having fled justice, it struck Ken as counterproductive that Belger would live out there in such an opulent residency. Suppose the forest provided that level of privacy.
Ken sighed through his nose as he pulled down a path off the main road and headed deeper into the forest. There was no streetlight, so he drove slowly until he reached a position that gave him a vantage point to peer down at the mansion. He parked the bike in a clearing, not surprised to see the area already occupied by half a dozen black vans and men in samurai armor. They had guns, swords, sais and banners like this was the goddamn battle of Sekigahara.
"Thank you for involving us," Retu bowed and stepped forward. "I didn't know you were so keen on working with us directly."
From the looks of it, he already knew. He fucking knew.
"I need the help to bust Belger and get answers. And you need to stop your gang war. Evidently, you were already in the area anyway," Ken corrected pointedly.
Retu considered him for at least half a minute, then smirked. Just the tiniest hints of such to change the dynamic of his Kumadori makeup.
"True."
"I called Interpol on the auction house by the way. I'll need Belger to give them as much information to crack down on the whole operation. Provided he doesn't have a little black book of names."
Retu raised his brow, scrutinizing and questioning the logical process of this but never suspiciously. 'Doesn't' was the magic word.
"It's a global issue that you alone cannot fix. Belger is just a link in an infinite chain."
Ken's breath caught in his chest. Right. He had that feeling. Still didn't feel very good getting smacked across the face with the awful truth. "I know. But it's that or do fuck all and live with the guilt. The auction house was his anyway, wasn't it? And if you cut off a link, the chain won't connect. It's like a spine. One vertebra makes the whole thing fall apart."
Retu nodded. "Suppose I can do my diligence to cleanse the Mad Gear of its immoral sins."
Something akin to relief filled Ken as he hopped off the bike and opened its top box to dispose of the helmet. And looked at a sealed bag underneath. Thirty thousand, scammed from an old man so he could buy a woman.
Ken wanted to vomit again.
He put the helmet away and locked the top box when his phone buzzed with a message from Juri that read; "I'm out of the cubicle. Heading through the elevator. I got the women too. I can't protect them all so please hurry the fuck up when I kill the power."
Ken had read that as quickly as he could and peered over the mansion again. He walked closer to a decline that would lead closer to a wall surrounding the premise.
"I'm heading in. Get ready when the power dies," he announced before he skidded down the green bank hill until he stopped by a massive tree. The glow from the mansion revealed several gnarls and sprawling branches that stretched beyond the wall.
He pressed his fingers against the trunk and, for a moment, reverted to his childhood, reaching for the lowest branch and wrapping the other arm around the tree. With one foot on a gnarl, he took a tiny frog leap and swung the other arm around the branch, using his never-diminishing strength to pull himself to sit on its hard surface.
Sitting in the tree, climbing from branch to branch with a testing tug before he continued brought about many a nostalgic memory. Forest shenanigans with Ryu where they'd catch fish with their bare hands in the creek if not engage in a water fight, racing to reach the tallest treetops. Racing to see who was the strongest climber.
It was Ryu. It was always Ryu. Now, Ken was alone.
And on his own, he let himself dangle off the final branch onto a set of tiles. He just about managed to map the width of the pool before the entire mansion went dark. For a moment, the world fell quiet, and time trundled into nothing. Ken used the sudden descent into the void to sidle past the pool and palmed the walls until he felt glass, frames, and finally a door handle.
Sounds from inside halted him for a blink; the roars of a conflict, orders being yelled, an army chanting. Then he raised his arm, angled his elbow, and struck the glass – thrice before it shattered. With no light, Ken didn't hesitate to shove his hand inside the gap and feel after the lock to the door, eventually letting himself inside.
He trod on glass shards and eventually tile flooring, bumping into a couch or a chaise lounge on the way. The sounds of battle grew rapidly closer so exposing his position with a cellphone was out of the question. The power came back on while Ken stood on the staircase and he continued on his quest anyway, ascending the black marble stairs that had the feel of probable pain should one ever fall here. On the first floor, he found himself in a wide hallway with carpets and a man's voice calling out for Richard – probably a personal assistant or a security guard.
He sent a quick message to Juri, announcing his arrival and location, and continued towards the double door from which the calling came. Now, Belger wasn't armed at the auction house; he didn't need to with ten men ready to gun people down at his behest. He was an old man in a wheelchair.
Ken could take him down. He hoped. He prayed.
He kicked the doors open and stumbled his dumb ass into serendipity. A bolt narrowly missed his head and flew into the wall behind him because he slid on the corner of a carpet. On a king-sized bed sat Belger with a crossbow in his hands. The men stared at each other, flabbergasted into inaction.
"What the fuck?!" Belger exclaimed and Ken would have loved to mirror that expletive, but he couldn't because of the crossbow now pointed at him.
He scurried backward and threw himself out of range from the doorway as a swift swish and a thunk just barely missed his foot. The bolt burrowed its thin head into the floor, ruining the rug lying there. For something so thin, it was scary how much damage they could do. Ken stood up, threw a glance backward, and looked ahead.
Looked at Belger moving without his wheelchair.
The sight of it – the fucking reality was like a kick to the teeth and it cruelly shattered Ken's reassurances into something primally uncomfortable. His instinct for self-preservation kicked in like a strike of lightning and he stepped, ducking at the flight of another bolt. Belger was tall and quick, loading and firing arrows that somehow missed on account of being tired – and Ken being taken completely aback.
He gathered his hand and fired a Hadoken that flew towards Belger. Obviously not a fighter as the old man threw himself to the floor out of harm's way in an absolute panic. Ken gathered himself for another Hadoken when he felt it. A second it took before he felt his entire leg jerk from the impact of a bolt.
Pain shot through the entire right side of his body. It was like a taser, quick and fast but absolutely merciless. He crumpled to the floor in a graceless heap, clutching his thigh, looking at the limb – the arrow embedded into his flesh and the dark, wet patch that quickly spread over the fabric.
Maybe the sudden turn of events would be enough to quench Belger's bloodthirst, so long as it came with the implication of a problem fixing itself. Ken glanced up at the old man now standing above him, forehead creased in dismay – then schadenfreude. Mercy? Not a fat chance in hell, Belger's expression said.
The tip of a bolt pointed at Ken's eye was just overkill.
He held the old man's gaze, understanding that moving either way would spill his certain doom. He really didn't like how his life had entered this bad spiral of death hanging over his head whenever he dared to do good. Recognizing such was a humbling, disappointing feeling. Ken closed his eyes and thought of Mel, Eliza, Chun-Li, Cammy, Guile, Sean, Ryu. Juri.
The bolt never came.
Ken opened his eyes to the bright light from the overhead lamps and the sudden firing of other bolts, many of them as Belger tried reloading at an adequate speed for whatever he was trying to kill. Laying on his side, Ken lifted his head and stared at the back of Juri standing like a beast about to pounce. Crap, he could cry, he was so happy to see her and hear the malicious laughter that came from the thrill of a fight.
She didn't let the old man reload, dashing at him with inhuman speeds that could only come from the Feng Shui Engine. Bolts were fired at her but she ducked and evaded them all, lurching at him like a jumping spider. Ken couldn't fully see the scuffle from where he lay so he pushed himself to the nearest wall and watched as Belger landed on the floor with a sound thud.
The crossbow clattered to the floor, just in reach for the old man. Juri kicked the weapon away, then stabbed him through the hand with her pocket knife when he tried to grab it. Under his horrified scream, Juri licked her lips through an evil snicker and raised her foot to stomp on his knees. Over and over until his legs were bent in the wrong direction. Ken allowed it because it wasn't murder but he closed his eyes to the brutality anyway, scantly hearing Juri's taunt under Belger's inhuman shrieks.
"Now, you got an excuse to use that wheelchair. Ain't that lovely?"
When Ken opened his eyes, he saw Juri turning Belger onto his back and cuffing the old man. It brought some uncomfortable memories of a police raid, tasers and almost dying in an abandoned prison. He looked at the bolt in his thigh, at how the blood turned black but since had dried. He wasn't lightheaded so no artery had been hit – hopefully. His leg still got a jolt of pain whenever he twitched a muscle and he sure as hell didn't appreciate the feeling of the bolthead poking out on the other side.
"Stay down," Juri ordered before she looked over her shoulder, and the glow in her eye vanished.
The gleeful smile had vanished and so had the murderous intent while she moved with purpose, skipping into the bedroom and returning moments later with a bedsheet in her hand. Ken let out a shuddering sigh of relief and listened to her footsteps. Juri was quiet but diligent in her work. No comments, just inspecting the bolt with her brow pinched together. They had been lucky that it was a bodkin arrowhead or Ken would probably have died by now.
Juri grabbed onto the feathered end of the bolt, snapped the wood with a swift flick of her wrist, and tossed it away. With the bolthead poking out on the other side of Ken's thigh, Juri pulled it out and dropped it next to her, splattering blood and bits of tissue on the floor. Her hand was smeared in blood, which she wiped off in a corner of the sheet.
She then ripped part of it in shreds, wrapping it around Ken's leg in a tight bind and pressing down on the wounds to apply pressure. As a tiny smear of red soaked through the white cloth, Juri wrapped another layer around Ken's leg and maneuvered him to sit propped up against the wall. Her hands were warm and firm. Ugh, Ken fought to keep himself as neutral as possible without diving headfirst into her chest. The urge must have been radiating off him because Juri took a long stare at him, and he felt increasingly flustered over his own weakness.
Then, as she leaned forward with a sigh, she said; "You are getting real unlucky with assholes."
A dry, tired laugh came from Ken. Yeah. That was true. He couldn't think to deny that so he didn't. He leaned forward and kissed her quickly; he'd love to kiss her for all she was worth when they were out of here.
"Thanks," he uttered with a sigh. He'd meant for it to come out confident and relaxed like the man he used to be, but it came out as raw and shivering instead. Juri nodded – transparently sympathetic. Not as puzzled by gratitude as she used to be.
She stood up and looked at Belger still whimpering and rolling around but effectively trapped in the hallway without the use of his legs. Juri walked over to him, removing the collar around her neck, and playing with the chain.
The black dress was light almost to the point of transparency. It only became apparent under the glow of these bright lamps. It was such an odd thing for Ken to focus on, but he'd rather be ogling some cheap nightgown from a thrift shop than thinking about the impressions left on him today.
The chain from then collar was made from actual metal and its durability was tested now when Juri used it to drag Belger across the floor, bunching up rugs, hitting walls and entry tables. His dangling legs knocked against one table and the impact caused a vase on it to wobble and fall to the floor, shattering clay and pellets everywhere.
"I'm sure you have an office, yes?" Juri asked, causing Belger to wriggle and protest with a frantic; "No!"
He looked over at Ken, panicked and uncertain until eventually he realized that Ken wasn't in any rush to plead for his mercy, let alone help him out. Then, his panic turned to fury.
"You-you-you two-timing piece of shit! I'll kill you! I'll find out who you are, who your family is and I'll kill them too!"
This caused Juri to stop and drop the chain. She turned around and the ruthlessness in her eyes was just about enough to cut the legs out from under Ken on Belger's behalf. It made him thankful that he had never been on the receiving end of her cruelty. She set her jaw and breathed out a long, frustrated sound while she settled over Belger.
Before he could recant his threat, she plunged the pocketknife deep into his thigh. Its blade was short, so she twisted and rotated it in the flesh. The intensity only increased with each agonized wail that came from Belger. Considering what Ken had been privy to, it was hard to feel sorry for the old man.
"That was for using my best friend as a dart board. If you threaten him again, I'll take your eyes next," Juri bent over to wipe the blade and her fingers in Belger's pajamas. "Now about that office of yours. People like you usually keep your big, bad secrets in places like that."
Belger whimpered directions feebly, tears rolling down the bridge of his nose. There was something uncomfortably satisfying watching this man trapped at the receiving end of power imbalances. It felt really, really good watching him get a taste of his own medicine.
"Alright!" Juri perked right back up. She turned her head to look at Ken, sounding contrastingly tender in light of her brutality. It'd make for tonal whiplash for all who didn't know her. "You hold on tight there and don't do anything stupid."
Ken could move. His legs just ached. In fact, his entire body ached from how tense he had been for half the night. When he offered a response, his voice was shaking. "Duly noted."
Two words spoken in such a way that almost revealed the burning wish for Juri to just stay. She heard it too, of course she did. And she smiled, dragging Belger behind her past the staircase, towards the end of the corridor.
Not long till sunset, Ken concluded when he looked at the clock on his phone. His leg had long since stopped bleeding and his pants were crusty from coagulated blood. The noise in the mansion had since quieted down and the samurai army had helped themselves to its many facilities. One had dropped by with questions regarding Belger and Ken had just been honest by telling them where he was.
No signs of Retu or Sodom and honestly, Ken was thankful because it felt like he was moments away from his breaking point. Exhaustion had made his body heavy and slow by the time there was a change. The door opened and Juri emerged with Belger, still dragging him around like a stubborn schnauzer. The sound attracted some of the samurais downstairs and Retu ascended the stairs, casting a glance at Ken but focusing mostly on Juri.
"Don't kill him," she ordered as she handed over the chain. "Don't remove his ability to talk either. I gotta run through some things first."
"And when you are done?" Retu asked.
There was a pause from Juri while she looked at Ken. "Given what he's guilty of, you can turn him into a fucking eunuch for all we care, yes?"
No skin off their noses for this one.
"…Yes," Ken nodded. Alive or not, a link in the chain would be removed. It was a soothing thought considering he had essentially just signed another man's death warrant.
And what happened to Damnd anyway?
Retu's makeup smiled with him, and he pulled the chain until Belger tumbled down the stairs after him. Absolute disregard for the man's well-being. Ken closed his ears to it and tried to stand up so he could have a little bit of dignity for what Juri had for him. Only to wobble on his feet. Okay, he couldn't quite stand perfectly. But he could really do with painkillers.
Not now, however. Not when he could finally have a proper look at Juri, checking for injuries new injuries. She raised a brow at him as he asked with a bated breath; "Are you okay?"
"Huh? Yeah," she answered, puzzled. There were a few marks around the wrists, possibly from some restraints but she looked fine.
Ken was just being irrational but; "Did they hurt you?"
"No," Juri answered while she put a black notebook on a nearby entry table and headed towards Ken. "But I think a better question is what's up with you because you look like you're about to puke up your own innards. It's over, right?"
Here, Ken fell short of composure. Would it really be over? He didn't know. He stared at the floor and sank to his knees before he was even aware of it. Defeated, tottery, guilty.
"Shit, I-I don't know. It's just…" he admitted with a shaky breath and pressed the bottoms of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars. Then pressed some more when the memories of a human auction flooded his eyes.
"T-there was a kid at the auction. He was around Mel's age. Got sold to some witch who paraded him around naked like he was her pet. It's…that could have been Mel. That was someone's son. All of them. They are family and friends of someone out there. Someone who loves them. And I think; how did things come to this?"
Juri walked closer. He hadn't heard or sensed it, but he now felt the warmth radiating off her. She stood right in front of him, and he reached for her like he'd fall off the face of the planet if he didn't hold onto something. His arms weaved around her, pulled her close and he pressed the side of his cheek against her stomach.
"It's too much. It's just too fucking much. I'm sorry," he sobbed into the skirt of the dress. Tears seared through his lids and got smeared into the fabric. His chest hitched and heaved uncomfortably. It was ugly and it was pathetic, but he couldn't help himself and he felt a great deal of shame over it.
He didn't know why.
"What for?" Juri asked, genuinely puzzled. She put her hand on his head and stroked his hair, fingers carding through strands. "You broke the chain. Belger was a huge part of this mess. You did the right thing."
Didn't feel fucking right. Ken, the rational side of him currently trapped somewhere under the blubbering mess he was now, knew she was right. But it just did not feel…right.
"I'm so sorry…"
"Yeah well, stop fucking saying sorry. You did well. Did your civic duty," Juri said, always so scurrilous despite the warmth in her voice.
"How can you stand it…?"
"…Because I learned the world just works like that. Always has been, always is, always will be. Just a law of the universe. It's hard to remember that there are good people in a wholly neutral world where you've been hurt by evil. You gave those people hope. I think that means a lot."
Ken didn't her answer to be so succinct and pensive. Juri never sugarcoated the grim truths of the world because they were just that – truths. Not evil, just natural laws. Ken could understand that; grasp the absolute indifference of the world he inhabited.
Guilt lingered for not doing more somehow – but he had done something. He had made a difference. And in the infinite objectivism, swayed by the good of one man, Ken, albeit modestly, calmed down a notch. He unwrapped himself from Juri and rubbed his entire face clean of tears and snot.
"Yeah, you're right. It's rough when you're in the middle of it instead of being on the outside looking in. Fighting Shadaloo, I always knew Bison was a dick and I could sleep well knowing that. I wasn't privy to all the awful things he'd done," Ken looked at the dark spots on the dress. "I wish I could take it back for those people…"
Guile had once mentioned something called 'moral injury'; the damage to one's moral compass. Some of his fellow soldiers had been discharged after getting diagnosed. Back then, Ken had been happy that he never enlisted. Silly of him to think that his values wouldn't get curb-stomped without a battlefield as a backdrop.
"You can't," Juri said bluntly then softened as she continued. "But you've given them a chance for a better future. They don't know you. Might never will but they're grateful, I bet."
Looking at her, there was a thoughtful expression on her face that made Ken wonder if she had been speaking about herself as much as he had the people trapped in a human auction. She reached for the black book, body swaying, then almost staggering. At first, it looked playful, but it was more likely that she was very tired.
"Got some good news by the way. A whole journal of all the fuckers in the human trafficking ring," she moved her arm to gently waft with the black book in her hands. "Interpol got their work cut out for them. Turns out old Pervy wasn't just a huge link. He's a top dog in this mess."
'A' would suggest others but it was a start.
Ken nodded and took in the information willingly, looking up at her while he gathered the fortitude to simply stand up.
"And as for the bad news…well, depending on how you look at it; we gotta go Nayshall," Juri continued.
"Why?"
"…I wish you had a chair so you could sit down but remember the Blue Light Foundation? The one company caught up in the Nayshall conflicts?"
Ken nodded but he wasn't sure he actually liked where the answers were headed.
"Well, Belger was its shadow CEO. Turns out the whole thing is a shell company for Terra Network Partners. If I remember correctly, the head of that is the white-haired old guy with the cane. The one you worked with."
The news struck something in Ken. He chewed the inside of his cheek and watched Juri intently with the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Yet he didn't try to prod her into admitting to some kind of esoteric jest and she didn't offer anything by way of joking.
Despite the dark shadows imprinting themselves under her sharp, eyes that indicated she had been awake for far too long, the stare and lack of smile made it clear that she was indeed dead-serious and it made her look twice as terrifying.
"…Dude goes under a bunch of aliases, but Belger had been piercing them together," she tossed the book to Ken while she continued. "Looks like he was planning a coup. JP got a fuckload of shell companies with a river of money funneling them all and Belger wanted them apparently."
Ken reached for the book, skimming the first page, skimming the next. Cataloging names, addresses, dates. Information on JP; Johann Petrovich, Jeanne Phillipe, James Pryce, Javier Perez, Johan Pavlovic. Nationalities, companies.
Masters Foundation. Masters Hotels.
He nodded and scrambled his mind for a concrete response but all he could come up with was two stuttering words. "…Right. Shit."
"Carpe diem, Kensaku. This might be it," Juri said soothingly casually, aware that indeed, this might be the end. How serious it was. How much it really mattered.
His breath hitched when he looked up at her, inhaling steadily on a ten count to quell the reactionary scathe of treachery. She nodded and stepped forward, then seized his face between her hands and bent down to lick his lips, soft and gentle like a kitten.
"I hope it is," he softened into her touch and leaned against it. Chasing it like a beacon amidst a storm. "Thank you, Juri. Really."
She hummed softly. "Should we send the intel to the blue boys?"
Smiling for the first time today, he nodded.
Ken's soul be hurting bad.
Also, the Blue Light Foundation was an invention for this story but it's been sporadically mentioned throughout. It was a setup for JP and his Terra Trips but just that. A minor plot device if you will.