The Colour Purple Chapter 90: Don't Stop Believing, a king of fighters fanfic

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

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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 written 2016]

We love the 80s.

Strangers – waiting.

"This is Casey Kasem…and NOW," the fresh yet scratchy voice said, "Number NINE of the Billboard top 100 hot hits! In the yUuuu eSsss Ayyyy." The radio announcer called from that small black plastic box when a bored 28 year old man and his wife walked by the wooden stall that sold fresh fish in the nearby town.

Living just to find emotion. Hiding – somewhere – in the night.

"What is wrong, darling?" She stopped in her tracks a dozen steps in front of her husband. A radio, was such a luxury that the only time the couple could listen to songs sung by strangers was when they went to town to trade their fresh vegetables for fish and beef.

…

Static lines of grey and black, across the screen. The old man's eyes blinked and he saw only a blurry picture. As much as he wanted to stay awake. The world was a picture still frame, rushing by like the view looking out of a train window, and it was rocking up and down in 1993. Up and down his heavy eyelids dragged him down into a peaceful world of sleep.

"Ah."

I still remember. That.

That song was not that popular in the grand scheme of things back in it's time, and it would take 26 years until it could be fully recognized by the world – but – back then it touched a few hearts.

…

"Ahhh ohhhh ou ahhhhhh…"

Strangers dancing… on and on…

It was number nine. That announcer said. It really did not tantamount to much – it was not second, third or even fourth – the song was hardly much and was likely lackluster compared to other songs ranked better in the rest of the world. One day, decades from now, no one would remember it probably, but for now… However.

DON'T STOP…

However something about it… Now. Made him remember.

Something about it…

DON'T STOP…

"Do you like this song, darling?" She asked with a beaming, cheeky smile, putting her hands on her thighs balancing her burlap bag that held fresh cuts of meat wrapped in brown paper.

"Just a small town girl… living in a lonely world… she took the midnight train going anywhere."

"Not really." He answered, acting nonchalant, but for some reason he couldn't break away. Both hands had half bags filled with vegetables he had grown with his own hands.

"Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit… he took the midnight train going anywhere."

But for some reason, without his knowing, he found himself completely immobilized, trapped, just standing there looking out into space listening to a disembodied American man sing a song on the radio.

"… for a smile they could share the night – it goes on and on and on and on…"

Strangers dancing…

"It is a good song." She said.

on and on…

The validity of a song – the immortality of words - lies not in how many number of people it amuses. In the end, the worth of a song – lies…

"It is… my Love," he said.

The worth of a song relies on the individual memories it touches in just one man.

"Streetlight people…"

The [memories] it takes from a dark void and raises it once again into the light.

Kaori stretched out her hand and weaved her fingers in between her husband's. She smiled and leaned her head in slowly – cautiously first, then as the tempo increased slowly in that cold afternoon as the wind began to pick up, she gingerly burrowed her forehead into his bicep as he stood unmoving until the radio told him he could once again be free.

This warm, sincere feeling. It was a pure – unadulterated love.

"Don't stop. Believing….."

"This is a good song, Kaori." Eiji Kisaragi smiled under his mask, so no one could see.

in December, 1981.

…

I did not ask much from the world. I had already given my life to you. Yet, despite that. Despite all THAT. You. YOU. This… THIS you took away from ME!

{In exchange, I will make the ENTIRE world my ENEMY!} Just to simply prove, that back then I was RIGHT. …We are all Kings.

A misty breath seeped through the teeth of Eiji's kneeling corpse. Don't Stop, Believing.

Chapter 90: Don't Stop Believing.

"Do you really send an old man to protect your son?" Ninja Master Makoto scoffed. "A man who even tried to kill him, a 10, 15 some aught years ago?"

A Sequence of Uneventful Mornings 25. A miserable story.

"In due time you will soon understand, ninja master…" Hajime Yagami said with a grin, his cheek resting smugly in his palm. "Just how much…"

Just how much that old man, Eiji Kisaragi, just, how much he HATES Kusanagi so. With. Every. Fiber. Of. His. Entire. Being.

…

"Leave me. Run away. Please." Miura wheezed.

NO!

We followed you. We believed in you. We will never, NEVER leave you! We will.

Show me… just this one time… That the entire world was wrong.

SHOW US! A FUCKING MIRACLE!

…

"Did you forget?" he sneered, "We Ninja, never utter that word."

…

"Hey…" A heroic voice whispered. "I heard you."

…

The spectacled boy twisted his entire body with such force he was about to dislocate the spinal cord that connected his upper body with his pelvis. He pushed forward and tore the sharp knife through bone, cartilage and flesh and across his master's throat. The blood trailed like bold red paper streamers behind his slash.

Shock and disbelief. Rage and rancor. Fear and absolute horror. Then lastly succumbing to the cold, empty finality of defeat. Those were the sequence of emotions that ran across the master's pale, frozen face as the seconds slipped away.

When the pillars of arrogance gave way to the destructive tremors of mortality.

"Miura." The master wheezed, his pupils pinpoints and the world was reduced to the piercing hum of white noise.

An exploding geyser of blood and flame erupted from the master's severed throat, gushing out high and wide, searing the ends of the ninja boy's hair and painting the side of his entire body in crimson red. "Mhhhyuurrghh… mmmggrrgghhhaaa…" the master desperately pushed his remaining left palm to cover his throat, but it was all futile, as meaningless as one were to try to plug a ruptured dam 50 feet tall with just one small hand. The master looked straight at his enemy with bloodshot, savage eyes. Eyes that cursed the wretched boy, with a determination to drag his nemesis to hell with the last bit of his life.

But the spectacled boy, only turned his head to the side to wipe the blood on his glasses on his sleeve and slowly looked back unblinking with tired, uncaring eyes.

The master reached out with his one left hand, even if it meant that his life's blood would escape from his body even sooner. He gripped the boy's collar and dragged him down closer so they could see eye to eye. Locking him in, just so at his very final moments he would never forget his enemy. To damn him – to curse him, and in the final moments he would burn him with the last of his streng….

The master looked at his left hand but it had gone cold. And all he could do now was look up while his blood and voice ran like a river down his chest. In response the boy looked at him with lethargic eyes, still unfazed as the man barely held himself up as he clung onto his shirt.

That look on Miura's boy's face, now the master could understand, hand trembling pitifully. With mouth agape in a pitiful whimper, he understood. That pale, cold, dead look. Do you remember the shit you took this morning? I do not. You are the same.

That was the last thing he saw when his knees failed him; When his arteries began to cavitate, his pupils dilated into gray, his face hit the boy's chest before his body slithered down and lay on the ground contorted in a twisted position drowning in a pool of flaming blood.

…

"Archers!" A voice shouted. "Attack! Advance! The rest of you, fall back and alert the palace! We must protect the princess!" A half dozen ninja archers appeared from the nearby rooftops while the rest of the 1st brigade turned to retreat.

Down the shaft of his arrow, the archer focused his entire being on the spectacled boy who stood unmoving over their now dead 1st ninja master. The tension in his bow held by his locked shoulder and back. Soon enough the tip of the arrow came into focus then he switched his attention to his target. He breathed in and held it until he lined up his weapon to the clear picture of the boy's eyes.

He held his breath and stopped. The picture frame encompassed eyes filled with rancor behind rectangular glass lenses. His target looked him straight in the eye an eternity away…

"NOW." The boy said, pushing up the bridge of his glasses with his middle finger. "You will soon know…"

…

"Do you know how to play skip rope? What if I told you – you had to play this game with a rope of razor wire?" Miura asked the young boy who stayed silent and pushed his glasses up unconsciously with his middle finger and hugged, fearful and trembling, two, tattered old textbooks on his chest.

…

The arrow pierced a thick block of wood the boy held in the front of his face, by sheer unbelievable accuracy, the arrowhead penetrated the block and slipped safely in between his index and middle finger that grasped it – stopping from flight eight inches from his face. He jumped back and twisted his torso 90 degrees when two arrows that was aimed at his chest embedded themselves deep into the ground. Practiced again and again, over and over, mercilessly, painfully, yet lovingly. Until it did not matter. Until nothing mattered.

The block of wood, arrow stuck through it rattled as it hit the ground.

The boy leapt up and pulled back his legs to drop his body back to a falling 'push-up' position, and once again the arrows that were meant for his thighs missed effortlessly into the ground. He rolled on the ground than took to a stand, counting the beats in his head, he took a step back, stopped, and instead of dodging further back, walked forward as he stood up calmly. The silence was punctuated by a single arrow that hit the ground behind him.

To trust your enemy is to trust yourself. IT would not have worked with less skilled assailants, this much the boy knew.

The boy released a long exhale and looked up once again at the unbelieving archers who, flabbergasted in shock frantically tried to load their bows for a second volley.

The silence was deafening when their enemy looked at each of them from down below.

…

"You will soon know, why we are FEARED!"

…

A! The one archer frantically made motion to pull an arrow from the quiver on his thigh, but in his haste, he stumbled and it fell to the ground. He reached out, trying to catch it with reactionary stuttering and in the realization of the futility of his actions he stood up again to grab another arrow by its back end from its quiver, but by then, [they] were already in motion.

ON demand. Practiced again, again, again and again – lovingly, tenderly - with no fear of failure and no concern for regret, two ninjas had already erupted into life. Two then three arrows studded the ground two footprints behind them when they ran at full speed towards the concrete building in front of them.

Just at the last moment as their entire body was about to hit the hard wall at a blistering 4-minute mile, converted mathematically to 15 miles per hour – the two boys kicked their right legs forward and drove it into the concrete in unison with so much force into the wall, they grit their teeth when their knees felt like they had jumped down and felt the full impact from a two story building drop.

"LOYALTY ABOVE ALL ELSE." They said.

A! Their footsteps were replaced with an orchestrated duo of a quick tempo of piano keys. SOMEWHERE… Somewhere. In his mind, the archer of the 1st brigade stumbled trying to lock the back of his arrow on his bow when his fingers shook flabbergasted.

A! "Impossible." He said in panic. "IMPOSSIBLE!"

"Oh?" Miura's diamond said smugly. "If in [this] story, if here… you can accept that boys can fly in the air as they leapt – if they can unleash fireballs from their palms… is it so unbelievable?..." That.

"AAAA!" The two roared when they embedded their heels into the concrete, and in the same momentum they cocked their arms back and forth, and at the next instant.

Then.

They pulled their entire bodies up, planting their opposite foot into the wall. In the same pace they…

He was now unable to decide whether he should point his arrow at the spectacled boy who had killed his master, or at the two voracious beasts that were now gnawing at his ankles.

A DEATH SENTENCE. "You will soon realize, exactly where in life you went wrong!" The spectacled boy pointed upwards arrogantly with his index finger. "You wretched thing."

Don't stop.

One, two, three, then four – if in this story, boys could cry blood, and unleash flames from their hands – would it not be reasonable? That. They could…?

Run up walls with just their God given feet!

To everyone's unbelieving glare, two ninjas from the 8th brigade began to run up the vertical wall in front of them. Just as they crossed a story and a half, when they felt the pull of gravity and the infidelity of friction let their toes free, they leapt up and dug their fingers into deep cracks on the concrete. The two ninjas hung in unison on three buildings that surrounded their comrades.

Their enemies' arrow tips floated in front of their faces, but as it trembled to take in that sight picture, six other bodies were already moving. A!

Six boys ran across the courtyard, with just enough fervor to distract the archers when they hurtled their shoulders into the walls at ground level. All six knelt on both knees, curling their backs at the edge of all three buildings.

That eyeglasses boy – those six hanging halfway up the wall – and the half dozen boys kneeling at the bottom edge of the concrete buildings – he could simply not decide. His arrow bobbed up and down – he could simply not understand the complexity of the situation when the mass of targets grew linearly in number.

"Saaaahh…" He said waving both his arms open, the camera lenses around him capturing every picture frame as it rotated round a round, to the side, wildly with a shrill roar of rapture.

"SHO-KEI!"

DEATH SENTENCE!

In its finality, six feet drove their right legs into the backs of six kneeling boys – propelling their hard muscle, Kusanagi ninja bodies up effortlessly into the air a story and a half up. Those six boys grabbed their brother's shoulders and further pulled themselves up in the air, defying the perpetual rules of physics - vertically running their feet on the backs of their comrades, up that wall until…

With. Until tenderly and lovingly – practiced again and again they were able to clear a four story relay race just as you and I was able to cross the street with one leap.

Now that arrowhead floated chaotically in front of his face, he was unable to move and his ability to make a decision was not turned to stone.

Six boys. Six bodies in perfect synchronisity, without taking their eyes from their enemy crossed their right arm across their bodies and drew their swords from their left shoulder when their faces floated up from the edge of that concrete rooftop. As akin to the grim reaper whose face slowly bubbled up from a black quagmire.

It came to touch all. Like death. It touched all – like RAIN.

…

You will rue the day you dared harm our one true Master.