The Colour Purple Chapter 98: T2, 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]

Eiji Kisaragi did not bother to acknowledge her – the 40 year old man pretended to not notice, or maybe he did not even care, mayhaps he, caught by surprise, did not even realize that Yamashita stood brooding over his shoulder again while he sat leisurely in front of the television. Either way he would not be the first to admit as such. When Yamashita leaned her arm forward into the rear cushions in a purposeful motion to make her presence known, Eiji made no reaction, relaxing his tense shoulders and draped his arms over the backrest, leaning back.

"You are still here? Watching your 'action' movies?"

"Ugggghh…" the man groaned, looking down at the dirty lunch plate on top of the living room table in front of him. The paused, freeze frame picture on the television was of Van Damme's ridiculously bloodshot eyes, more preposterous than William Shatner's Star Trek extreme over-acting, staring blankly outwards while he held Bolo Yeung's head contorted, snapping his neck in two.

"What now. Did he finally kill his enemy?" Yamashita hemmed and hawed.

Without a word, Eiji leaned forward and reached for the aluminum housed remote control. With a few clicks. The television screen was reduced to gray and black white noise and the VCR player spat out the VHS tape it housed within it.

"Hey, why did you…"

"The ending is boring." Eiji said, putting his hands on his thighs with over exaggeration and walked over to change the rental VHS tape. A wireless remote control. This new model did not have a wire that connected it to the television and magically communicated with all the electronics in front of Eiji through thin air.

Look! Does this not displease you!?

"Hey, wait, I…" Yamashita said. But before she could finish Eiji had already exchanged the VHS tape and threw his entire 180 pound weight into the couch like a disgruntled teenager, oblivious to whatever the Captain could say.

Probably a few years ahead of its time, I was not so sure when I first heard the term. But "Whatever", that expression truly served to annoy me. In 1993 it was likely the right time, but Eiji's aloof indifferent body language lauded that – 'WHATEVER!'. Eiji reached for the remote control and pushed the large button that had a triangle engraved in the middle of it.

Back then. We had to get off our asses to rent movies from brick and mortar stores. Then, we had to deal with pale faced, uncaring teenagers who complained about minimum wage. But the air was clean and bearable, though sometimes stagnant – back in those days.

"Eiji!" Yamashita repeated again forcefully hunching over to scream into the man's ear.

"What!?" Eiji turned around finally over his shoulder. What.

Eiji stopped in mid thought just as he turned his head and barely caught a slight glance of the woman who badgered him from behind, his mind, riding inside his speeding, twisting skull without a seat belt came to a screeching halt when his vision came colliding with Yamashita's face. Eiji froze in place and despite his best interests he could not stop his shoulders from locking in place when they rolled back and the look in his eyes betrayed his once indifferent demeanour, petrifying his entire body. The woman's face that looked back gifted him a cold stoic look, Yamashita's hair was cropped in disarray, her once flowing, beautiful hair had been lopped in half and so much more, it was far from reaching her shoulders and at most cut in tattered array at eye level.

It was a look of terror, uncertainty, but wrapped with such miasma, there was something else in that mixture of feelings that was something he could not understand. As every day passed us by, and we took for granted the tomorrow that was gifted to us – what was once a feeling of eager gratitude when we were younger, became a bland apathy when we felt our joints harden and atrophy. However, sometimes there was an afternoon that seemed so strange – so out of place, it commanded old men to stop in their tracks. Breathe in. Then unconsciously before they even realized what they were doing, they took a step backwards with their right leg, followed by their left – only to notice something that he never took note of… for all these years. This feeling…

This sensation that suddenly twisted her gut, was so uncomfortable, but on the other hand – It was not so different from when strangers first meet.

It was a familiar picture.

Yet,

It was not so familiar. The face that stared back at Eiji.

LOOK AT ME.

She said.

It was the FIRST time he looked at Yamashita…

…

A new opponent dropped from the treetops and landed in a kneeling position. A female ninja, Eiji noted. She took off her dark purple mask and looked up at Eiji. Eiji, had his hands up when the air was disturbed, but slowly put down his guard.

We want to live forever – we had to stay together… A cold breeze drifted through the two, making the pink petals by his feet shift to the side. In this magical rave afternoon.

…

"E…Eiji…" Yamashita said again, but for some reason, eventhough it started out as firm and angry, mid way her voice stammered and it was as if she had forgotten what she was about to say. "E… Ei," Yamashita rolled her pupils to the far right edge of her eye sockets, puffing her cheeks over her gritting teeth.

Eiji's mouth was hidden under his cloth mask and as such, Yamashita was unable to discern the expression on her enemy's face – twisting her vision back and forth, a valiant effort to pull her head over from and escape a raging wave that wanted to pull her entire body beneath and drown her, mayhaps an unconscious plea to reel Eiji's eyes in – in a short span of quiet - she stood unmoving over Eiji's shoulders – and now – her ears and the back of her neck felt a bit cooler, unobstructed by her short, tatteredly, cut hair.

To be freed at long last from [chains]?

…

In 1995. DO NOT YOU FUCKING DARE! DO. NOT. DO… DO… "DO. NOT!"

At the END of their journey, Eiji reached out with his right hand, his left clutching his stomach with steady pressure to keep the red blood from gushing forth any further. In return, as Yamashita walked forward fearlessly step by step, she looked back over her shoulder. Her tattered hair – that despicable, short, ugly hair that Eiji ever so despised – it was an abomination – a HORRID ABOMINATION of everything Eiji held dear, was now, matted with viscous red blood.

"I, I can not… If, if what he says is true… then, maybe he can…"

"Rugal LIES! HE LIES, EIJI!" Yamashita screamed, desperately trying to reach him. "Of ALL the times, of ALL THE TIMES – you HAVE TO DO IT NOW, OLD MAN! If you have to wave your hands around like a cheerleader – even if you have to summon a magic belt you HAVE to..."

Why must young women be so cruel and demand old men to perform and deliver at the most inconvenient times? "I can no longer do it, Captain Yamashita." Eiji clutched his wound, pushing his back into the wall where he sat to numb the pain, unconsciously forcing a weak smile. "I can… not do it anymore… I am…"

If Rugal can really DO that, then, I am now so afraid...

She wiped the back of her hand over her face and locked her gaze back at Eiji, continuing to move forward to the zombie horde.

OBOETEYAGARU.

"If Master Iori DIES up there – then both our lives would have been meaningless!" She said. "Remember me." Remember this face. Yamashita stabbed her index finger into her cheek, and in the same motion, pulled her mask down. Oboeteyagateruya!

I have become afraid to die.

A shadow plummeted to their ground like a comet, and in the epicenter of the aftershock that hurled the undead bodies outwards, a snarling bearded face clouded by shadows slowly hunched out like the wild animal monster he was, the oozing carnal growl seething though the gaps between his teeth. You.

"Mister Kisaragi!" Kyo Kusanagi reached out from the large hole that had emerged from the crumbling floor a full story above them within the sinister BlackNoah.

YOU. GOD DAMN YOU!

The world suddenly turned black.

…

Today.

Eiji. He breathed out and turned his head away so slow that you could hear each tooth from the gears in his neck snap in place one by one. His eyes were like spears that stabbed the far wall in front of him, frozen, and unwilling to look away from the television.

For all these years… perhaps you understand too…

"These petty, ridiculous action movies…" was "Was what kept me alive, Yamashita."

SUICIDE.

They were the ONLY thing that kept me from falling into the despair and darkness of insanity.

…

…shiny and neeeeew…. Like a virgin touched for the very first time… like a virgin.

The song that resonated within that small wooden shack from a large plastic radio, a slim steel antenna outstretched, from that dilapidated shed of a structure that was no bigger than a modern telephone booth. It stood outside that small building that stood the largest in that quaint village beneath the foot of the hill.

"Like a viiiiirgin…" an old, silver haired Asian man, likely in his 70s clenched and snapped his fingers in rhythm as he bobbed his shoulders inside that small house. Oblivious to the world he danced in place to the ridiculously popular 80s song, eyes closed in a world of his own. In a dry old raspy voice he shuffled in place as he sang, "Like a viiiirrrrrr… ghhhh…" Just as the needle of that record turntable in his head skidded off the edge abruptly scratching, cutting the tune that resonated in his mind perfectly in half, the old man turned his gaze up, now eyes open and frozen mid-chorus in his song to greet a man who looked at him with a blank stare through the window of the ticket booth he sat in.

"GGhhh," the old man wheezed, absolutely taken by surprise – his eyes darted open in a pinpoint globulous gaze, feeling his heart drop immediately into the base of his stomach. At the moment that pushed him to the edge of death. Eh. "Eiii… Eiji-san." He said petrified and deathly embarrassed.

"Hello… Samu." Eiji said, nodding with each syllable, looking into the ticket window with cold beady eyes, right at the old man who might as well have had his pants down at his ankles.

"Eiii…" he stuttered, "Eiji-san, how long have you been standing there?!" A peculiarly rhetorical question to ask a ninja. A question lost in statement. The old man's face grew pale before turning absolutely red, it seemed like he was about to faint.

Eiji remained silent, simply looking at the man, perhaps he was just as stunned. Eiji had a brightly coloured cloth bandana over his mouth and was dressed in a white baseball jersey over loose fitting tattered blue jeans and sandals.

As moments passed, the old man Samu looked up absolutely frozen, and Eiji, without a bit of mercy, stood wordless. Both of them swimming in a thick and very awkward quagmire.

The sweat began to bead on the old man's temple.

"I have been…" Eiji paused. Once strong, uncaring and indifferent to the feelings of the outside world, his spirit had now been replaced. The strength once in his voice lost steam at the last instant when he sighed – and to mimic his lifeless voice, his eyelids dropped in surrender at the realization. Eiji's shoulders hunched forward, just as he felt a dagger stab his chest, drain the blood from his heart and render him weak and flaccid. Once again the world had become silent, rancid and viscous. "I… I had just arrived here, Samu."

"Oh… Oh yes." The old man shuffled the loose pieces of paper in front of him in a meaningless stammer and looked up with a weak grin. "I haven't seen ya in a while, Eiji." The old man grinned. "Maybe almost a year or so?"

"I was on a journey, Samu." Eiji replied.

"Oh!" Samu said curiously. "Was it a good one?"

Eiji did not reply immediately, and instead looked at the old man wordlessly, his eyes turning sour, stern, then at the edge of it all, it fell limp when he remembered… "It was a hard Journey, Samu. But, It… it was good. I met some friends."

"Friends?" Samu chuckled, not being able to stop himself. "Eiji-san to meet friends? A rare and special journey indeed." Samu already liberated from 5 minutes ago he held a chuckle inside but he paid it back when he began to choke.

Eiji's eyes drove iron spears through the old man's body. But…

"Yes, Samu." Eiji fell back in retreat. "I met a repulsively immature old Chinaman; and, a sweet young lady." Eiji reminisced. "It was a good journey."

"That is good, Mister Eiji," Samu grinned – flashing his stained brown teeth meekly.

1984.

"What is playing today, Samu?" a worn, casually dressed middle-aged ninja asked.

"Ah. Eiji-san!" Samu replied in glee. "For the first time, we have a NEW movie!"

"I see." Eiji replied blandly, not getting his hopes up, since this run down old theatre in a backwater country town had not shown a movie that was not at least 2 years old for decades now. "Samu."

"No, I'm serious!" The old man stressed again. "It was released last week and we just got it 2 days ago! This is amazing!"

Eiji said nothing.

"This is the greatest action movie… no, THE GREATEST movie I have ever seen," the old man in the ticket booth resounded in confidence.

"What is it called?"

"It is The TERMINATOR! Starring Arnold Swartz-san."

"The… Terminator?" Eiji repeated flatly.

"I promise you, it is the greatest, Eiji san." He said with a smile. "So, ah…" Samu drew out his voice, looking above the counter, left and right over Eiji's shoulders. "Will… will it be two tickets? Eiji-san."

As the last bit of sound dribbled out of Samu's mouth, Eiji simply stood firm and motionless outside the ticket booth, for a moment then echoing minutes, lifeless, there was no one else around him. Even the breath that crept out of Eiji's mouth was frigid, dry and lifeless. JUST like that ONE incident. At the end of his long, painful and meaningless journey – after meeting that young lady, and that crazy old man. That spring of 1984. All that was left.

All that was left, was death, and DARKNESS. They were right. That girl – and that obnoxious old man was right. In the end, either way, I would fill this emptiness in my heart, with the pain of others, or, with darkness.

An uncaring lethargic sorrow. Save for that light.

31 - 32 years old, after the story to be known as [Buddha's journey]. The quest of a thousand steps, Eiji found himself once again, here, at the foot of the steep hill, outside the ticket booth that was a familiar sanctuary. A cloth bandanna wrapped itself over his face, just under his nose like a, a villain.

Wordless, he wanted to just destroy the entire world. Yet, he kept silent.

This was the very first time… eversince meeting a beautiful woman – since meeting YOU – I finally felt peace, and love.

…but now… Those petty emotions had been replaced. This was the very first time…

I felt…

That I wanted to DESTROY. Every – living - being. ABSOLUTE [NIHILISM]. Every last one of them. And I would not stop – until each and every one; until not one… remain standing.

Waiting.

Pleading.

Begging.

Praying.

Dying.

"Eiji? Mister Eiji?" Samu asked again when he could no longer bear the silent statement that had passed three and a half minutes.

"Samu." Eiji said. "Samu… just… j…"

Eiji bit his lip and sucked in the voice he had uttered just an instant ago. Under his mask, Eiji bit down hard, stabbed his teeth into his lips and hunched, rolling his shoulders down trying valiantly – so hard, he begged, to hide the tremors that shook his shoulders.

And then…

Eiji looked up, breathing in. A smile, under his mask that was at a glass rod break from shattering into a million billion pieces – yet hidden from the world. INSANITY, a wordless, selfless, merciless, devouring, gray haze. The only thing Samu could see were the cold hard eyes that floated over the ninja's makeshift bandanna mask. "Just…"

And then – we drove ourselves to the very EDGE of sanity. DESTROY the world.

"Just, one ticket this time…"

Samu.

In a 1984. November. The cold wind that brushed an old man's cheek, seemed so inconsequential.

…

A ball in his stomach curled into knots, the back of his spine froze shut unable to move – or maybe that was what Yamashita felt when she leaned on that couch – the last few moments felt so cold and rancidly uncomfortable.

"3 billion human lives ended in August 29, 1997…" Eiji's silently mouthed the phrase that echoed on the speakers.

In 1993, a time when old men would talk about ridiculous notions, and we dismissed them, because we thought that these old cronies were simply bitter and were clinging to times where they felt superior, but in truth their inability to keep up - their ignorance of the normal modern world that was beyond their comprehension made them feel obsolete. SO what?

A skeletal robot pranced across the screen, shooting laser beams at hapless humans.

"As before, the resistance was able to send a lone warrior…"

"Ei,…" Kaori's voice was abruptly cut short when a rapid sequence of piercing chorus of EXTREMELY loud BOOMS - skull shattering bass that pierced her ears, and dislodged the earwax that was trapped within.

Yamashita covered her right ear with her hand instinctively, but, she immediately realized that she was unable to cover her left on account of her paralyzed off arm. "EIJI! EIJI! The sound, turn the…"

"Shhhhhhh…" Eiji said, leaning back into the cushions behind him with a gleaming smile under his mask, putting his left index finger vertically across his mouth. If only to further mock her, Eiji pushed the buttons on his remote to increase the volume.

"Eiji, what is…?"

"Shhh, Yamashita." Eiji reminded a soft sigh, putting his extended index finger across his lips, his voice that was absolutely muffled by the defeating roar of the television screen as the soundtrack played without shame. "This is the greatest movie of all time."

A Sequence of Uneventful Mornings part 33.

…

Chapter 98: T2.

"Eiji.. what…"

"Terminator 2. 1991." Eiji said. Finally breaking his defense, he looked over his shoulder, turning slowly with a soft look in his eyes, but stopping abruptly. He said nothing for a moment when he found Yamashita looking back at him. Her once long hair was now cropped horridly, the longest strand barely long enough to cross her mouth. Yamashita's right hand covered her ear and her twisted face – somehow if she snarled enough Yamashita thought she could autonomously constrict the canal of her left ear too.

Yamashita looked down at Eiji.

The same, Eiji looked up and stared at her.

Yamashita looked down at Eiji.

The same, Eiji looked up and stared back at her.

"Hagh." Eiji let out a calm expression, "HaGHh…!" He repeated. Eiji shuffled his body to the left, tapped his thumb repeatedly on the remote control's volume button and slapped the cushion next to him with his right hand. "Must you choose to stay here, stare over my shoulder and talk? Just shut up and watch."

Captain Yamashita made no movement and rolled her eyes round in its sockets.

The sun outside their windows walked across the sky and as the warm rays peeped through the windows, there was only one thing it could see. Eiji Kisaragi mouthing silent words out into the air, and beside him, now calm, the ninja captain of the 8th legion of Yagami palace sat at the other end of the soft couch, placing a cushion length [precariously] in between her and him. Both of them, watched a movie in front of a large television screen.

"The greatest movie of all time? We shall see if that is indeed true… Eiji Kisaragi." Yamashita crossed her legs and wove her right forearm into her plastered left arm that was forged in a cast.

…

We shall see!

…