The Colour Purple Chapter 111: Enemy of the World, 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 written 2016]

[Even if you understood that way BACK THEN both of us, two [children], were placed in the very awkward polar opposite axes of 'circumstances'. You cannot deny the fact that we continually stared at each other for a whole 16 years now… and don't you think that maybe…? Perhaps maybe?]

Sometimes I wonder to myself, how things would have turned out if… I won't lie, those 7 days I spent in 'that house' were some of the most frightening, yet, somehow, it left me with a calm, sweet sense of peace when I reminisce about it. The stoic, cruel Knight – absolutely devoted to his family to a fault, his saintly wife – the only woman in the whole wide world who could fall in love with such a man, and…

By a bond carefully tempered by the slow passage of time.

[Maybe, even perhaps, as we begrudgingly glared at each other in hate – there came an eventual time where we suddenly were able to complete each others' sentences without a thought.]

{with that man, and, …that little asshole King.} Clark did not even notice himself crack a momentary smile concealed under his interwoven fingers that floated in front of his face, completing his posture of introspection.

[Both you and I.]

But, starkly unlike anything Commander Heidern ever provided me, it was only in 'that house', did I feel truly safe, wanted – perhaps this was what it really meant to belong unconditionally. This was probably what I was cheated of, by the world. And it was not God who gave it back to me – but a man. Those 7 days, and the many many days upon years after were truly a treasure an animal like me did not deserve.

{Though, there are times when I wonder to myself.}

[These preposterous man made notions… HATRED and LOVE. Two things that started at the extreme ends of their revolving spectrums...]

Ding. Ding. Ding. How can someone live with the sound of an antiquated cuckoo clock that reminded you with annoying chimes, each and every hour of day? It was cold, dank and frigid. And now… it was 3 am, in THAT given morning.

[WE HATED each other so very very much…. But… Maybe, perhaps… and mayhaps…]

I wondered, what IF I did not stay that extra night, on Christmas eve that I would never forget. I wonder… would I have gone home with Heidern, after being mortified by my utter helplessness, I probably would never have been able to fight again. It would have been a different kind of peace – in fact – what good would a wounded dog be to a child army? I probably would have lived the rest of my days useless and vestigial, only to wait until I died.

{Would that have been so bad?}

[And even if they began from the edges of extreme galactic orbits…]

I wondered, what IF I did not stay that extra night, on Christmas eve that I would never forget. Because on the 7th day, something horrible happened.

The camera that documented the time that elapsed, the time we had forgotten, zoomed out from Clark's spectacled face. Clark's dark shades were so out of place, blocking his eyes eventhough he sat unmoving in a void of nothingness in La Bijoux. Clark's fingers were interwoven across each other like a hammock that supported his chin when his face gazed out at invisible walls that were hidden behind his black Ray-Ban Wayfarer shades.

[Could they end HERE?]

When that disgusting clock silenced, the light sound of the front door unlocking cracked the frozen moment that engulfed the entire room. The heavy wooden door swung open slowly, then bit by bit, emerging from that crevice, a hard footstep, then two then three steps, in 1993.

A sudden gust of wind swung the wooden door, wildly slamming it into the wall with a loud crash.

[…Could they end in the same place? That – was what I wondered?]

The END of La Bizarre Love Pentagon – part 25.

The 6th day. 8:18 PM.

A sudden gust of wind swung the wooden door wildly, slamming it into the wall with a loud crash. Knight immediately put his beer down and turned around. Clark did the same, and both men stood silently giving that middle aged woman their utmost undivided attention, staring at her with a heavy, uncomfortable, and very awkward silence.

"Ah!" She said a bit embarrassed. "Sorry." She apologized after losing control of the door and startling the two men. "If you boys want snacks with your beer…"

"Thank you mama." Knight replied, picking up his beer once again.

"Thank you, ma'am." Clark said at almost the same instant, mixing both their voices – somewhat slightly offset, into a momentarily indistinguishable garble. Clark bowed his bandaged head slightly.

"We'll be inside soon." Knight said, waving her away. Knight looked out to his wife with his tell tale scowl… though… he choked a bit, and as strange as it looked Clark could have sworn the crotchety old man grinned for a moment.

"Okay. You boys don't spoil your appetite." She called out sweetly and bowed low in return, turning around and went back into the house, leaving them once again alone to their own devices as a heavy cloud loomed over their shoulders.

…and as quickly as that flash of light came, so too did it disappear into the distance - both men once again looked outwards looking at everything, and anything, except each other.

"I have to go soon, sir." Clark said, feeling the uncomfortable silence wrap itself around them. Clark looked out to the street waiting just as we did as helpless grade school boys for their ride home, that we sometimes wondered might one day, may never come.

We wondered, what if one day the adults realized that we were weak, petty and useless, what if one day they would simply leave us behind and we would be left all alone? Because we tantamounted to nothing. The swirling thoughts burning a hole in our stomachs… would we be all alone when they decided we were worthless? Would my parents one day leave me to rot, because I was a FAILURE and I could do nothing right…

{Would I…}

"Don't worry, I've already called the old codger." Knight chuckled, taking a sip of his beer straight from the bottle, while peculiarly still holding his cardboard caddy of assorted bottles in his other hand as he was so fond of doing. "This is non-negotiable. You will be joining us for Christmas eve dinner, son. Heidern can pick you up tomorrow evening."

Clark sat on the edge of the curb by the front of 'the house'. His forehead was bandaged and on his one eye was a cotton patch. His cheeks were a patchwork of tape and band-aids. The boy stared at his hands, looking down at the dark brown bottle of 'gourmet' root beer that floated in a tiny orbit between his knees. "A." Clark caught himself short, feeling the pain radiate from his mauled face that was bruised and swollen. It really hurt. His shoulders drooped down weakly and by now his body felt so weak and limp, for 6 days he slowly felt his spirit bleed from every wound on his body when he lost all will, all confidence. But… in spite of all that…

It really hurt to smile.

"Thank you." Clark said softly. "Thank you. Sir."

"Hey… Comemon." Knight said again in between sips, so awkwardly it made Clark wince. But it was okay. Sometimes, I wondered, what IF I did not stay that extra night, on that Christmas eve that I would never forget. Would things have turned out differently, had I instead defied the great plan that God had set aside sadistically for me, and just for me?

"I am sorry, son." Knight's face returned to its blank, stoic nature. That glimpse he revealed to Clark was so slight and fleeting indeed. And despite his cruel nature, there was something about Knight that only Clark could understand. Perhaps this, what was buried so deep within, was something only another man could see. It was a soft sense of remorse that a now tired old man had tried to encase in concrete and hide away deep inside so no one would have to see it. "I am sorry, son. Believe me when I say that I didn't mean to do this to you."

"It's nothing sir." Clark sighed.

"I honestly thought, I truly believed that maybe my friend Heidern could have provided someone who could withstand King. Someone King could NOT break." Knight said stern and flat. Though to anyone else, it sounded like a plain insult, but to Clark who carefully listened, he could easily hear Knight's proud voice crack, despite hiding that part of himself under hard and weathered layers.

Someone who King could NOT break – and maybe could return to my child, even just a very small part of his humanity.

"…"

"But I've broken you too, haven't I?" Knight sighed,

Clark looked out to the peaceful suburban neighbourhood street. Quiet and empty except for two men who talked about matters of little consequence to the ways of the world. Slaves to the world. Wondering if they were still wanted. Waiting for their ride home, to take them away from all of this.

[Why are we still here?]

"Just like those three boys I told you about. That was the first time…" Knight said.

I thought that when King did that. Maybe King thought that too – that after those three boys died. That the world would finally leave him alone. I thought so too… but… unbeknownst to him, and to me – [it] had the complete and exact opposite effect.

That was when [it] started. Fighters from all across the country began to seek him out. TO test their might. But each, and every time… The result was the same.

Clark turned his head up to the sky, still unable to ignore the slow pulsing beep that enslaved the city. Up in the sky, a dark shape floated and made its way round and round, the globular shape looked like a black hot air balloon that wandered aimlessly in the heavens.

"All of a sudden. Unbeknownst to us…" Knight took another full sip.

Why are we still here?

…and why has God not already taken us away?

…I say, this is the question we continue to ask each and every day of our lives.

Like locusts, they all descended upon him - like rain. All of a sudden, King had made an enemy of the entire world. And each, and every time, the result…

Was exactly the same…

Chapter 111: Enemy of the World

"Why are we still here?" To answer this question, is why we are still allowed to live.

A Royal British Knight, a man who would have gladly laid his life down for his country, he was an honourable man who could do no wrong, but now it was so HORRIBLE, that he would be punished this way.

He set himself on one knee and laid his son on the cold floor, then plainly walked away. Despite the nurse's distress, his mother said nothing.

{WAS 'THIS' THE FIRST TIME?}

With a helpless feeling of being alone, without the warmth and love around him, the baby's face contorted and trembled, and finally erupted into a shriek bawl. Crying so loud, so loud, he cried, yet no one came to his aid. There was no one who would hold him or comfort him. He cried, until his lungs became hoarse and dry. Then at that one distinct moment…

The prince of fighting – trained since his birth? [What does that even mean?] As the baby cried, they set him on the floor, separated him from his mother. They left him crying on that cold floor, so he would UNDERSTAND how cruel the world was. How from the very beginning, he had to provide himself with his own love?

Then at that moment – when the last of his breath left his lungs and he could wail no longer. His mouth was wide open, and no sound came out, in this simple way, with eyes wide open, the wide world entrapping him, he came to realize…

I suddenly realized…

{THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME, I TRULY FELT THE INSANITY.}

…

April 1, 1976. Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

From a wish, it was given form. With a PURPOSE, an imaginary being was given conditional existence. From the black distance, a blonde haired boy stood awkwardly, its upper body tilting somewhat backwards. Its face was now fleshy in colour. Two blades cut two small slits in the form of makeshift eyes. The viscous goo peeled open slowly exposing pinpoint white pupils bouncing wildly like rubber balls within a sea of black sclera.

CHUK! The blonde haired boy – your hair as if made with dry straw, with its right hand dug its talons into its fleshy face, tearing a ragged mouth from ear to ear. As the tattered pieces of flesh floated like torn curtains waved, his ripped lips moved silently.

{Oh. Can you SEE me?}

…thought the Prince gleefully, tilting his head coyly at an inhuman angle over 90 degrees to the right. Crack. Crick. Each joint in his neck crinkled.

"Hiro… HIROSHII!" Futaba screamed releasing his grip from King's left arm and crossed it over his face in fright.

Immediately the television screen cracked into three pieces from two horizontal lines.

The Prince cocked its head back and thrust forward like a hammer – flinging its entire upper body to rush like the hunched over, prehistoric, wild beast it was – both hands, all 10 talons scraping the ground. A monster ran at full speed towards the four boys.

"Augh!" Chang could not help but react in the same manner, falling back and scuffling backwards desperately trying to flee a predator that ran on all fours at them.

The Prince leapt up with both clawed arms spread wide, its triangular teeth separated in slow motion when his body floated over the boy, slowly inch by inch blocking the sunlight and covering his face with a veil of darkness. A deep and vengeful snarl, as the shadows began to strangle his spirit.

His pupils, now rendered into small beads, bounced erratically in the while pools when the spirit of vengeance came to visit him without his knowing.

Finally, Hiroshi who still straddled King's midsection tilted his bodyweight backwards.

…

{Please save me, and in exchange…}

I WILL give you purpose.

I WILL give you unconditional existence.

I will make an enemy, of the entire world.

…

{Your wish is my command.}

…

King's eyes flayed open, separating the darkness with a single horizontal slash, peeling those heavy curtains in two opposite directions.

Do you know the inevitable solution placed to your body when your father forces you to perform sit-ups with iron weights on your chest that are half your body weight?

King's upper body snapped forward with the veracity of a jagged steel bear trap – both his open palms hitting Hiroshi in the chest at the exact moment as the Japanese boy shifted his center of gravity back. Before Hiroshi could understand what was happening, a pair of heels wrapped themselves under his armpits, over his shoulders and hurled the back of his head hard into the ground.

Hiroshi's right hand that held his knife floated in front of his face and his left hand flailed themselves across his nose to steady himself. When his vision became clear, King was already upright and had his back already facing him. The small boy's eyes perched and glared back over his shoulders at Hiroshi.

"A."

A full force swinging reverse left heel kick, with the same devastating effect of a baseball bat slammed directly into his left cheek, hurtling Hiroshi 2 feet rearwards BACK into the ground from wherest he came.

"AgH!"

"Chang!" Futaba shouted, his open hand outstretched. His friend, Chang had already gotten up and ran as fast as he could from the wild chaos. Away from that beast that rushed towards them with vicious rancor. "Cha…" WHACKKKAM! Futaba's pupils shrank to cold pinpricks. God pulled back that revolver's hammer with his thumb and pulled the trigger! The exact instant King delivered the reverse kick to Hiroshi, he skipped forward with his left leg leading while still rotating, dug deep down and in instantaneous motion…

BOOM! King's left leg drove itself, twisting itself into the soil hard, molding it, raising it, commanding the earth to unite with him as one – to share in his SUFFERING.

Wholesale slaughter!

He thrust his right leg forward at the same instant he willed his upper body back, all the while wringing his midsection corkscrew tight – King's thighs hurled a solid push kick – with the power of a searing hot iron locomotive - into Futaba's face as he laid on his knees.

In due turn Futaba's vision became cloudy and he had lost sight in his left eye. He rolled around in the dirt, scuttling rearward on his back, pushing fearfully with both legs like a worm now. His left hand protected his face and his right hand scraped on the ground to steady himself. When he looked back, his brain had now rendered the once clarity of the world into a swirly miasma – he could see nothing else and while the environment was blurry one thing was clear. King's face had become twisted and disfigured. Futaba took a deep breath in but that air could barely keep him conscious when his brain, in utter shambles, had now forgotten, and did not know what to do with the oxygen he desperately pumped into his lungs.

…

CHUK! The blonde haired boy – The blonde haired boy – your hair as if made with dry straw, with its right hand dug its talons into its fleshy face, RIPPING a ragged mouth from ear to ear. As the tattered pieces of flesh floated like torn curtains waved, his mouth moved silently. The MONSTER was now looming over him.

"You fucking…"

"Hiroshi! STOP!" Eagle continued to run, now 3 blocks away, even at the expense of his own life, absolutely uncaring even as he weaved erratically through moving traffic.

King felt a hard thud slam into the side of his body that he could not fully understand.

Hiroshi, still on his knees, cocked back and thrust his knife directly into the right side of King's stomach, digging disgustingly into soft flesh, embedding it deep so its hilt touched the cloth of King's shirt.

…

"HIROSHIIII!" The old constable shouted in fright!

Eh?

King felt a hard, firm pressure jab into his side, just under his lowest rib. It wasn't that burning feeling he was accustomed to feeling when the tip of a blade slowly stabbed his flesh. It was like a solid punch that was peculiarly numbing. A knife had impaled itself into his side.

Hmeiiigh?

A very wide paintbrush swept across the sky, transforming the blue into black. When Hiroshi looked up King's lips pulled wide in a Cheshire cat sneering grin, twisting, transforming the features of his visage into a pale, burlap faced rag doll.

[OUTER DARKNESS.]

Hiroshi's right hand cocked back as far as he could, his thumb perpendicular with his shoulder.

Again the paintbrush swept the sky from black to blue.

"HIROSHIIII!" The old constable shouted in fright!

"Eh?" Hiroshi experienced a peculiar feeling. Not so much unlike what they called 'déjà vu'. A ripple in history – a feeling that the situation currently being experienced, now, had already occurred in the past.

…

Hiroshi was poised to strike with his knife, and King looked over his shoulder at the boy behind him, with his right hand ready to stab a knife into him from angles of infinite possibility.

Straight ahead, to the spine, to the right, a slash, or to the far left? Which possibility was it? Familiar with the concept of 'the sequence', it is utterly impossible to predict how an action, with infinite possible conclusions, would play out; there were infinite universes and possibilities after all.

There is however, one way to coerce the pendulum of FATE to sway a certain way. There is no way to predict the flow of FATE, but if, you can coerce it to sway a certain way?

King's silhouette, the solid black lines that outlined his body turned into blurry, sketched, jagged lines. It would take too long against a knife to turn around and counter when your back was presented to an enemy. Prince immediately hunched his body to the right - driving his right foot directly to the same right side.

"You fucking…" Hiroshi stabbed his knife to the right in immediate response.

The soft, grayscale spectre left behind by King's body remained in place as his true body twisted and instead, ran to his left. It's much easier to cheat FATE if you can coerce it to choose a statistically logical, and pre determined path.

"A!" Hiroshi felt his throat clump into a tight knot – his right hand fully extended and committed to the right side where there was nothing but air to meet the tip of his knife.

The pendulum of the grandfather clock swerved to the furthest extreme to the right.

On the rear of his lower bicep, Hiroshi understood plainly that King's left knee had already locked itself firmly at the joint behind his right elbow. King's right leg wrapped over his forearm in between his wrist and inner elbow. And, King's right hand clasped firmly under Hiroshi's wrist and the other over his thumb, effectively trapping his stabbing attack.

There comes some times when even destiny slows to a standstill – the 'effective time' when a man realizes that no matter what he does, he could do nothing but sit silently and watch.

[OUTER DARKNESS.]

Hiroshi stumbled forward, both knees on the ground and now his forehead to join them on the dirt. On all fours in that pitch black night. Stumbling over himself when he was unsure as to how deep the floor was underneath him. With the knife he thought that could bring himself higher, he scuttled on the ground like a cockroach.

Do you know the utter terror a man feels when a 1,000 pound crocodile locks its jaws on his arm, and despite his resistance, he could not escape? When it does… DO you know how it feels when all you could do is simply sit and watch, as those cold reptilian eyes stare back at you? Knowing full well just what it is about to DO to you – even as you cried for mercy – to IT - it would be no different – from… To a crocodile, what it was about to do to you was no different from it taking a shit.

A pair of three foot jaws jammed down hard into Hiroshi's arm, just over his elbows locking it in place, and the Japanese boy, as much as he valiantly tried to break free, could not escape from that monstrous grip wherein there was only one inevitable result.

The wide paintbrush, as wide as the entire world plastered a black opaque tar over the blue sky – and as quickly as it had come, it passed to return it to its peaceful blue spleandour.

Tell me, do you recall what you were doing then? The day was April 1st 1976.

…