The Colour Purple Chapter 55: I still don't know your name, a king of fighters fanfic

The Colour Purple... The King of Fighters '95

This (chapter) fanfiction was originally written circa: [XX.96] (Thank you)

"Which Character are you?"

Note to self: Legacy chapter numbering (32- - -), does not match.

ORIGINAL CHAPTER

{Is it really only 10 O'clock?} he asked silently… rhetorically. The outside world had already grown very dark and the climate had thankfully cooled down to a bearable temperature now. As much as Eiji wanted to otherwise, tonight, he kept his windows closed and locked.

Just a few months ago he eagerly welcomed the cool breeze into his small, simple, lonely hut - let the sounds of the big nothing keep him company, and just the rustling sounds of his curtains was sufficient to woo him to sleep. Another day alive and another night's asleep. Just waiting. Because with him, though lonesome, was a peace.

However now, he couldn't get used to the sounds of air compressors, lost cars that would whizz by erratically in the middle of the night, and strange domestic animals outside his window. He kept the window locked just like in the days of youth gone by when he was constantly at war.

Eiji pulled the sheets over his shoulder and rolled to the side. As he did, he let out a sarcastic groan as a response to his tired body. He could no longer recall, so long ago when he fancied himself a bitter old man trapped in a young man's body – he could no longer recall the precise moment when his self deprecating woes fulfilled themselves and he felt his body growing more stiff, less supple and overall, simply older. His eyes caught a glimpse of the large white wall clock at the far side of the room. It was 10 O'clock. Eiji relaxed – whether he left his windows locked or not, he was always waiting, his head tilted to one side – then, there was darkness.

The stillness in Eiji's mind was suddenly interrupted by the ever so faint sound of creaking floorboards. Both eyes opened slowly. Eventhough he was in the downstairs guestroom, by the far corner of the house, he was barely able to make out the sound of footsteps. It was the sound of heavy, uneven, unsure steps. Though it wasn't at a pace of an eager, foreign intruder. It was however distinct and different from a second set of steps that were evenly spaced, walking at a calm pace, slowly and daintily with a calm and normal purpose. The sounds stopped for a moment, then a cautious shuffling sound replaced the clear distinct steps, only to once again be replaced with the unique signature of each person going about their way.

Eiji arched his back and pretended that he only imagined the sound of his twisting muscles when he rolled to the side. The darkness had instantaneously been replaced by a creeping gray dusk that seeped into his window. It was 4 O'clock. Eiji let out a sigh, rolled the other way and buried his head into his pillow, and Eiji Kisaragi, waited, for a little bit longer.

Chapter 55: I still don't know your name

Indeed, the world is as beautiful as it is grand.

With a small black garbage bag in his one hand, Billy allowed his other hand to trail behind him. In the same care and caution as we would when leading a small child, he slowly shut the door. Just looking over his shoulder as he exited Iori's room, he carefully eased the door closed and at the last inch put an extra effort to baby the doorknob so it made hardly a sound when the bolt latched shut.

{It's too fooking early to be doing anything}, Billy groaned wordless as he scratched his head through his bandana. A wheezing yawn escaped the boy's lips - Billy put his one clawed hand over his face, running his thumb lazily into his eyes to loosen the grime and tiredness from the night before, and with the other, stretched upwards as high as he could with garbage bag in hand.

Billy arched his back as far and tight as he could and twisted his upper body, rotating at his lower back to the left, and then to the right. Both his arms were now up, crossed at the wrists over his head as he finished his warm up stretch with a squinting yawn in an effort to squeeze the last bit of fatigue from his body.

"YAAAAAWWWWWAAAHHH…." Billy let out as he opened his eyes. "…HGGAH?!" His long bellowing yawn was cut ABRUPTLY in mid breath when the sight of a tiny Oriental lady, barely over five feet tall, at Billy's estimation, stood with curious eyes at the blonde haired Englishman a stone's throw away from him by the stairway railings. Billy held onto that small garbage bag in his hand in the day's break of morning.

No matter how you sliced it, it definitely looked far from unsuspicious. A grown man tip-toeing silently in the early morning hours with a filled garbage bag in hand, silently exiting the master bedroom was simply a sufficient formula for disaster.

"Ah." Billy began to open his mouth but he instead stuttered and was a total loss for what to say. Billy felt his knees feeling weak, and a slight bubbling, cold feeling of panic ran up his stomach and up his throat. The young girl was dressed in some ethnic, traditional garb Billy was unfamiliar with. It looked strange, the long flowing, heavy robe seemed cumbersome, and quite out of place.

Billy stepped back and held his tracks, not once taking his eyes off the girl that, by some unknown power, held him at a stalemate at the other end of the second story hallway. It was an uncomfortable, unfamiliar silence to the boy who was just about his wits end as to what to do next. {Wait…} he slowly rationalized. {I live here.} Instead of trying to justify his awkward predicament, Billy came to question – just exactly who WAS this young, strangely dressed girl and what was he doing in Iori's house!?

Before Billy could decide, the dainty lady simply crossed her arms on her lap and bowed down. "Good morning, Mr. Kane." she said as she rose and on her face was the softest, sweetest smile that totally left Billy even the more speechless. She picked up the tray with two teacups and a metal thermos and shyly shuffled her feet around and past Billy before entering Iori's room and closed the door behind her.

Absolutely disarmed, Billy felt himself go lightheaded as the pressure slowly escaped from the small cracks in his head. He stumbled backwards, let his weight fall on the hallway balcony railings and rested both palms onto the wooden horizontal trim. Billy didn't even realize that her innocent smile had reflected onto his own face and painted a lasting impression as he chuckled helplessly at his easy defeat.

…

"Shitsurei shimasu…" the girl uttered silently as she closed the door behind her with her off hand. She excused herself in ever so polite a fashion when she entered the dark room. At a careful and a silent fashion – a motion she had performed so many tens of hundreds of times by now she laid the wooden try down by the nightstand with the utmost care. She folded her sleeves and tucked them tight just before she purposely sat down the seat by the other side of the room. At the other side was a dark bed and an unmoving body. The deafening silence. Despite all that her face beamed a bright smile when she laid both fists on her knees. Patiently waiting…

"Kyo wa…" She began to say in her soft, comforting voice that no one could hear, 'cept for that body that remained still in that bed. Today is… "Kyo wa… ii tenki desu." The weather is nice… today. "Dakara…" Dakara… So… Please…

"Mata atashi to ishouni…" she stopped mid breath… "So please," the girl thought that her young master was already tired of her saying it in Japanese, "Maybe, you want to see it again."

"…this good weather… with…"

The world – is as beautiful, as it was grand. As long as there was someone else with us.

"…me."

…

There seemed to be only two states in her mind. Sleeping, and, awake. Was it the sound of erratic, heavy footsteps that ran through the dried leaves that scattered the ground, or maybe it was the slow glowing warmth of the sun that touched her cheeks that pulled her out of her slumber. It was far too early. Still in a place of half consciousness, Yamashita, Captain of Yagami's elite guard – as others repeated so annoyingly, with her ears that could hear amidst the chaos – the signature of six sets of distinct rustling footsteps approach her per high up in the tree. The tree she had laid in wait an hour or two ago. {Had I fallen asleep?} she thought.

Yamashita, the captain tilted her weight to one side. She shifted her body and rolled off that tree branch with the same casual confidence everyone else in the world would when rolling out of bed to fight another day. Both palms clawed into the wooden appendage that tilted up and down under her weight. A purposed breath left her lips and while summoning strength from her chiseled back muscles, she pulled her body up and with ten repetitions, lifted her body up in ten slow and firm chin ups before letting her grasp free. She fell to the ground and walked calmly to the 6 chuckling men that bowed low and welcomed her back into the waking world.

"Okay ladies!" She called out to her men, swinging her open left palm arcing over her head. "GOOD MORNING."

Are you maggots ready to DIE today?!

"YES, CAPTAIN!" her six loyal soldiers replied in unison.

"Good…" Good morning. Today was like any other day.

…

Eiji set his coffee cup down and with his eyes shut, calmly put his left arm on and over his shoulder, reaching back as far as he could. With his four fingers he dug into the deep pockets at his upper back and tried to massage the soreness, all the while rotating his shoulder socket in the hopes of piercing even deeper into his body.

He breathed out his mouth, through his mask.

Surely the aching pain and the stiffness that was once overwhelming was growing weaker by the day. At the very least he knew that his body was still functioning and at the same token he could still recover from even the most tremendous trauma. Fighting a devil in a young boy's body, though tremendously taxing, was something he could still handle.

He continued rotating the one arm in its socket then switched hands and stretched the other side of his body. Eiji tilted his head to the side as far as it would go before it dared break and fall off. Without opening his eyes he said, "Look what the cat drug in…"

Billy's shoulders slumped in disgust and pulled one of his hands out of his pockets and scratched the back of his head. His other hand remained hidden and tried to claw the itchy feeling from the back of his thigh. "Who still speaks like that, old man?" Billy replied too lazy to care. "You watch too much TV."

"Humph!" the wry smile could easily be seen even underneath Eiji's cloth mask. Caught between spite and perhaps a reassured comfort, "Good to see you are still alive, boy."

"Back at ya, old man!" Billy grit his teeth and shook his head back and forth lightly. The gritting teeth, that, at once a very long time ago, knew no other sensation than disgust and angst, was slowly curling up at the sides. However, before either of them could notice, Billy put both hands in his pockets and cocked both his shoulders up in a tense shrug. He replaced his soft expression with an aloof, seemingly nonchalant look. With eyelids half shut and eyebrows pulled up without a care in the world. "If fuckin' Iori didn't kill you, I was sure you'd die of old age if I waited too long to come back."

"Welcome home, Billy."

"Good morning, Eiji."

…

"Good morning, Mr. Kane," a diminutive girl's voice interrupted Billy's thoughts. Billy immediately grabbed the countertop behind him and swerved to the one side. "Would you like some coffee?" She asked in a slow, soft-spoken sweet tone that made the back of Billy's neck tense once again.

Billy's brows twisted up and down – he began to open his mouth but was not sure what to say next or what exactly to do next. It was that girl from the second floor hallway he had run into earlier this morning, he recalled. He couldn't help but let his eyeballs roll in their sockets unconsciously to the side like a guilty boy, and focused his wide eyed glare at Eiji. Billy grit his teeth and silently pulled the old man in. HELP ME, Billy's expression screamed at Eiji, pleading as he bobbed his vision at the old ninja then back at the girl who still stood smiling at him, then back to Eiji.

"Hegh!" was the hoarse cough that came from the back of Billy's throat like he was coughing out a stuck fishbone from his esophagus. "Heh… hEigJi!" he coughed more forcefully again, jerking his head at the girl's direction not daring to make eye contact with her , because when Billy did, he saw that the girl was still smiling patiently, and refused to break eye contact.

"Oh... have you not met already?" Eiji replied casually after setting his coffee cup down and folding down the top of the newspaper in front of him.

"Yea… yeah.." Billy mumbled out, looking uncomfortably at the ceiling.

"It seems that due to our incompetence, Yagami palace saw it fit to send Iori a new babysitter," Eiji chuckled as he folded the newspaper in hand into fours and neatly placed it in front of him.

"Ehhhghhh?!" Billy let out a long, drawn out plea.

"Indeed!" now, a fourth, female voice interrupted the conversation.

"WAK!" Billy leapt out of his skin, and with both hands up in surrender jumped to the side when he realized that a female ninja stood casually next to him by the counter with her arms crossed. She stood in a terse stance – her chin was tilted up and her eyes looked down at the Caucasian boy condescendingly despite being much shorter than him.

"Good morning, Ninja Captain Yamashita." Eiji said in a bland formal tone. I couldn't even tell if that was merely a product of Eiji crude attitude, a task so effortless for the old man, but the distant tone he held seemed almost… almost…

"Good morning, Eiji." Yamashita shrugged her head at Eiji, breaking the train of thought, but to Billy's dismay she swung her face to him locking glares with him once again, except this time, unlike the little girl, her firm, steely, trap jaw gaze didn't give Billy the luxury to break away.

"Hey!" Billy shouted out, completely flustered. "Didn't anyone teach you how to knock?!" He thrust his index finger at the door, switching his glare between her face, the door, then back at Yamashita.

"But the window was open…" Yamashita answered – so matter of factly.

"What?!" Billy stammered, his square jaw bobbing from side to side. "You can't just let yourself in through the window!"

"Why not?" Yamashita replied immediately, the expression on her half masked face, sincerely perplexed. She just could not comprehend how a brutish Aryan was instructing her on the fine ways of etiquette.

"You…" Billy stumbled on his own words, "You just can't!"

"…and just what will you do about it, Mr. Kane?" Yamashita challenged, dryly. Slowly and surely her jaws sank in, took hold and dragged Billy's bloody self esteem down into a dark pit without her knowing. "You have strangers in your kitchen right now and all you can do is gawk with your hands up. This morning I hear you let a girl you have never seen before into Iori's room uncontested!"

"Ah..." The slave girl said a slight sound trying to break the flow, but Yamashita wouldn't hear any of it. All the while Eiji simply sat silent and leaned back on his chair watching. Looking from the outside, all he could think of was wonder if Yamashita made a special effort to go out of her way to be such a twisted woman, or perhaps she was like that merely as was her nature.

"Quite the guard dog." Yamashita scolded Billy. "Perhaps Kusanagi should send a woman in a bikini to kill Master Iori, and you would simply watch."

"Hey, Bitch!" Billy came back, launching a fist up then jabbed a finger at Yamashita's face. "You've got it wrong."

"How am I wrong?" Yamashita answered without moving a muscle and her eyes ripped into Billy even deeper. "Please explain to me how I am wrong?"

Billy curled his face into a spiraling sour expression, before finally breaking his face from Yamashita and looked to the ground.

"Your reply sounds like an unsubstantial response."

Billy said nothing, and as much as he wanted to bust at the seams, fists flailing, he held back and put his fists in his pockets as they shook uncontrollably.

"Am I not correct, Mr. Kane?"

"Okay, okay, you're right!" Billy threw his hands out – grimy bloody goo wanted to surge out his mouth in a disgusting surrender. "I'm sorry – a'right?!" He shouted at his shuffling feet.

"You do not have to apologize to me, Mr. Kane." Yamashita said.

"Captain Yamashita." The girl bade her time and coyly pried herself between Billy and the ninja captain. "Would you like some coffee?" she said in her now familiar, diplomatic voice.

"Thank you, but do you mind fixing tea?" Without so much as another thought Yamashita turned her eyes at the girl. The demeanour in her voice didn't change but as immediately as it had escalated, she had let the issue drop. "Coffee does not sit well with my stomach, if you please."

"Ofcourse…" the slave girl replied with a wide beaming smile. "I have some ready also. Would you stay for breakfast, Captain Yamashita?"

Eiji pushed the folded newspaper in front of him, letting out a lethargic sigh. "I will have some breakfast too." He said. "Thank you… aahh… Miss…" Eiji stopped mid breath.

The girl bowed to Eiji in response.

"..ah…" Eiji dragged that breath on as long as he could. "I…" he said. "I don't think I know your name, Miss…"

"Ah." was the girl's innocent reply when she draped both arms over the tray she was carrying and let it down to cover her thighs nervously. She stood still for a long moment, weighing her words carefully before replying. "Mr. Kisaragi does not need to worry about that," she said. "Just call out and I will respond."

"You don't… you don't have a name?" Eiji said, and Billy made note, that as flat and somewhat merciless Eiji's voice always was, like this Yamashita ninja bitch, maybe he imagined his voice skip a beat, just this one time.

Yamashita remained silent – this time – Billy would savour and dwell upon it.

Eiji did the same.

What were they harming with their honest concessions?

"No. I do not." Gravity seemed to want to pull her face down, but she bravely held her head up and once again that look on her face, a smiling visage that fought back a cruel, profound world, was now a picture that Billy could not, and did not want to break away from.

Billy Kane was always last in line and as he always was, trapped. He wasn't sure if anyone else felt the same way he did at that time. Perhaps he simply imagined it. This strange girl, in a foreign dress, simply smiled fearlessly. Something he couldn't understand. Billy understood it well.

The kitchen was well lit, and had a warm casual, loving feeling. It was not 50 stories high up in the sky. It was neither hidden in a dark noisy alley, nor in a domain that was accented with screaming chaos. With light pastel colours painted on the walls and furniture. Even if you tried, you felt at peace, without a worry in the world. We looked around at the countertops that decorated the perimeter of the place. A stainless steel sink, a wide table, so inviting that bade you rest. When you looked at it all, you would just forget the trials of the world around you. The calming scent of the coffee pot just cleared your mind, accented with the numbing sound of the running tap water. This. This was a home that made you feel that nothing else mattered.

"We cannot allow this." Eiji said, a sentence so plain without any fanfare. "Ojyou. Why do not we call you, Ojyou, from now on." Eiji smiled through his cloth ninja mask, tilting his upper body forward into the table.

Billy's face formed a confused look. He turned to Eiji, then unconsciously at the female ninja captain, Yamashita. Yamashita stood unmoving as if nothing happened.

"Oh-Joe?" Billy said out loud, blandly, utterly ignorant.

"It means 'princess', in Japanese." Eiji was quick to correct the uneducated, slithering Aryan with his index finger launching up proudly.

"Ohhh…." Billy murmured. The boy's right eyebrow cocked up, and it may as well have been – had a fish hook ripped into his forehead and twisted his face in an unnatural way. Billy swiveled his face to the one side. Billy couldn't hold himself back, despite any plea to social convention he just slapped his clawed hand into his face and groaned. The groan was a greasy, disgusting feeling that slathered his back and made every joint in his body creak uncomfortably. What a cheesy, absolutely lame thing to say, even at the old man's standards.

Eiji had already made himself a place in Billy's ladder of respect. Eiji was crude, arrogant, and insensitive. The words, despicable and nauseous, he would tie to the man without a second thought. However, to go this new unflattering low, Billy didn't think was possible.

Billy let his face palm droop down and was fearful at the sight he would see when he looked away from the ninja pair and to the girl who was likely too embarrassed to stand at the preposterous notion. {You dumb, fucking old man…} Billy thought…

Instead of the sight he had expected to see, Billy looked up at the slave girl and instead of the contorted, twisted face that would mimic his own, he saw an entirely different photograph.

Her lower lip trembled and tucked itself under her upper teeth. Billy spun round and looked once again intently at her but she had covered the lower part of her face with the tray in her hand. The red glow from her cheeks slowly conquered her entire face.

A slight shriek – an uncontrollable 'meep' seemed like the sound that leapt out from her lips filled the room. So quiet as she had always spoken but within the painful silence it sounded like a wail of pain.

The girl, at her limits hid behind the tray. She turned round and shuffled to the end of the kitchen. When she could no longer walk past the wall that blocked her path. She just dug her face into her hands and as valiantly as she tried to hide it, the backs of her shoulders trembled.

She wanted to run away, but she could no longer escape.

After what felt like an eternity of a quiet time for those four people, she shuffled her feet again, turning round toe to toe with an invisible string tying her feet together.

There wasn't a bit of malice, neither a shred of distaste in her face. She was neither stunned nor disarmed by chains. Slowly the girl peeped over the tray that covered her face.

"Thank you, Eiji-sama." The slave girl dug her knuckles into her eyes to wipe away the emotion that served to break away the composure that she had tried to uphold for days now.

"Agh." Billy's heart sank down to the balls of his feet. Had it not been his palms that propped him up on the cool marble countertops behind him, he was sure that a higher being would cut the puppet strings that held him upright and would leave him splayed helpless on the floor. His mouth was left gawking and unbreathing.

…and in similar fashion, Eiji put his hand over his mouth, totally forgetting that his face was already half concealed by his cruel ninja mask. "Ah…" he said in like fashion. A breath he never felt escape his lips but not before cutting up his insides like a spiraling weapon, tearing his organs from his toes then rising up – up to his heart before escaping his throat with no defense, for perhaps 20 years now.

"Ojyou…" Eiji said now, a sight unseen, he was able to just muster enough courage to hold his tears back and scoffing, kept his voice cold and solid. "Now… stop. Please. If I was 20 years younger…." He laughed. "I do not think I would be able to hold myself back, and not make you my woman." He said warmly, laughing... sighing somewhat longingly.

As the whirlwind enveloped them all, Billy's spine tensed and he couldn't restrain himself from slamming both fists down. He hurled his body to the far side of the kitchen – this emotion – this was something he was accustomed to. Conflict, and an immediate, fearless, even incompetent resolution. Billy's fighting heat built up from the bottom of his gut and roared out. "Yamashita! Don't you…"

Billy looked towards the female ninja he expected at his side, she, who was surely ready to cut him down…. But she was gone. "Eh?"

"Yamashita left already." Eiji pointed with his thumb cocked back at the window.

…

When it all quieted down, and everyone had left – Eiji sat on the couch and did what he enjoyed more than anything. That was to watch old action movies from the 1980s. He picked up the remote and on his command the electronic box in front of him came alive.

Does this world make you sad? That we grew up so fast? ...and watching reruns on television during the middle of the day was all you have now?

Indeed… The world is as beautiful – as it is grand.

A Sequence of Uneventful Mornings part 1.