The Colour Purple Chapter 115: and You and I, 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]

I've known HIM, for a very long, long time, boy.

…

"Jeszt ist es zu spät." A searing pain ripped through the young boy's stomach. It was a swirling, tearing, suffocating ball, with barbed fangs that ripped through his insides up until the moment when the pain was so unbearable that he found it hard to breathe. IT'S TOO LATE NOW. A handful of lead bullets had already tattered his insides. …and he knew, that he was soon to die.

One day, decades and decades past [now]… they may call us… EVIL.

It is too late now… for US.

This time, in a year different from 'NOW', so far dislocated from a sense of peace when flashing images rushed through a metal box – a box with large knobs and dials, bursting with upbeat, sensational songs enamoured teenagers. Now, in 1977. THIS. This was a time far detached from back then.

Perhaps even a 'lost generation'.

"A."

A different place – and a different time, from so, long long ago… 20th Centrury.

In front of the small child soldier, a leather boot pierced the pool of water that had collected in the crevice of soil in front of him. Amidst a terrible war, a generation when even boys fought in stead of adults, another of his peers stepped in front of the wounded teenager with a calm and stoic look plastered on his face.

But NEVER forget – as you live in the lap of luxury… now.

The brunette boy's left hand was stretched out two feet in front of his nose, all five fingers arranged in single file straight out in a petrified chop. In, like fashion, his right hand rigid as a board floated in front of his mouth – a very strange, and peculiar fighting stance.

We simply did, as we were told, and to us…

On the ground in front of the two teenagers, one feeling his life seep slowly away, was an empty Browning High Power pistol, with its metal slide locked backwards signaling that it was now vestigial and useless.

"Wir ergeben…"

WE. WILL NOT.

THIS IS THE GREATEST [OBLIGATION].

The brunette haired boy in front of the dying lad tensed his biceps, "Wir ergeben… UNS NICHT." Despite a week of war he took good and careful care, that his military uniform was of the utmost prim and proper. Despite the exploding houses that surrounded us with loud bomb like thunder and rattling gunshots of full automatic fire that served as our refrain.

WE DO NOT SURRENDER!

So, do not be quick to judge an old man – until you have indeed walked a mile in his shoes. For just like you do now…

WE!

As you live in the lap of luxury now, ignorant of what your fathers and fathers before them had to endue. Never forget…

That an EVIL man LIVED as a good man once too. That he believed.

"Wir ergeben uns nicht."

WE DO NOT SURRENDER.

As he laid in place, and knew he was dying – the small German boy hardly able to prepare his own meal, but could kill another man, he did not think… where would I be? He did not think – how would things be different, if instead…? No, none of that – instead he looked upon the boot of his friend that stood stern and hard in front of his dying body.

Before you think yourself SO great. As you wallow in self pity.

In front of both of them, a blonde, British boy calmly dropped his pistol to the ground. Just the same, the German brunette child realized it was futile and the heavy steel tool in his hand was just as useless when there were no more bullets in its magazine.

"Mein freund." He wheezed when the last of his life left his lips.

"Huhhgnn." The blonde haired teenage boy grunted. In the next frame, he put both hands on opposite sides of his temples.

In a time many decades before TODAY, ONE brunette haired German believed in his omniscient conviction, and, ONE yellow locked man thought to make his strength ULTIMATE.

…and truly – despite their own knowing – they – two young boys of opposite politics - had unwittingly, become intertwined with the center of the 'TROUBLES'.

Twisting his lips in an awkward manner, not even looking back as his friend wheezed his last and crept into the sweet embrace of darkness beneath him. He could only look forward, the German raised boy grunted, measuring his breath before he uttered, "This… this is… This is your GRAVE!" HE roared with outstretched fingertips.

Understand, that the SUFFERING you experience now, is NOTHING compared to what had transpired decades before your time.

"Hey!" The blonde haired boy called out, curling his fingers in… "Hey, Comm-mon!"

…

YOU! OH! A KING OF FIGHTERS!

WE DO NOT SURRENDER.

And those words spanned – an ETERNITY.

We fought each other – we had every intention to combat each other to the DEATH – because… because it was better than wasting away in an existence of apathy and indifference.

WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER.

…

"My Papa was very fond of him…" King said to Robert. (22)

The END of La Bizarre Love Pentagon – part 29.

…and even as we suffer here, now, ALONE, together. Don't you stop and think, that those who came before us, had to persevere amidst a more horrendous life? It is no wonder, that old people cannot help but RESENT the young. Yet they can never appreciate how WE, willingly enslave ourselves to THEM. How we knowingly submit ourselves to our fathers' sins.

…

"Is all that true?" Clark asked. "King was able to beat 3 trained fighters all at once?"

"Yes." Knight answered.

"Ahh," Clark let out a breath and leaned back on his extended arms, looking upwards to the evening sky. "Then," Clark continued, "Then I don't feel so bad being beaten by a monster like that." He chuckled weakly. Though strangely his face was not smiling.

…

"CLARK!"

Thinking about it now, I don't think I remember much, because at first, I had regarded it as all so insignificant to me at the time; and I had numbed myself to what was happening. Blurry pictures, muffled sounds. Disjointed memories that now, I wished I had indexed more carefully because one day in the future, I may have wanted to reminisce about them leisurely.

There were only two volumes in my life.

My father rushed past when I stood over Clark who was now unconscious on the floor in front of me. Much like the short moments after a loud bang, the sounds in my ears were garbled and it felt like I was underwater. The Knight fell to his knees and took hold of Clark's shoulders, gripping hard - it took all of his fortitude to not shake the boy for he knew doing so had the possibility of worsening Clark's condition.

Perhaps it was a concussion or even a severe spinal injury. Knight put his hands on opposite sides of Clark's head when the boy started to tremble a bit from an oncoming seizure.

QUIET…

I did not seem to understand what was happening – and I seem to remember my father's mouth open and close but words were not coming out of his lips. He waved his hand back repeatedly, in sync with his wide, silently screaming mouth, not even taking his eyes off Clark.

But in the end, he only looked up at me, though the artificial video, like a worn and decayed VHS tape, it played back snowed and blurry as I tried to recall it today - since it was my mind just making up the sequences and filling in the spaces in between the memories with imaginary pictures I never thought good enough to record. His face suddenly became the only thing that was clear now, the only thing, amongst a sea of out of focus pictures, the only thing my mind had photographed was his clear look of disappointment… the seething frustration in his eyes, and my heart filed it very carefully in a special cabinet in the back of my brain.

"…..!" Again he said something but I don't remember.

My father stood up, pushed me aside and pushed on the small plastic button on the intercom at the opposite side of the room to call my mother.

The 6th Day.

I simply stood there, not completely understanding why my father was so upset. Why was he so flustered and scared? This scene was not so unfamiliar to us. There was a boy unconscious on the ground and he could probably be dead, yet my father never really cared before when it was ME who had lain there instead. So I could not really understand why this was any different.

…and so – I simply stood in place and slowly pulled myself back and far, far away until the space around grew even blurrier, I felt myself getting smaller and I fell back into a world of outer darkness where I could escape and be alone.

…

"There you go Clark." The Knight's still nameless wife placed a bandage on Clark's right eye had swelled up into a grotesque proportion, but it was more to reduce the strain on his vision. "Take this too and put it on your head and neck." She handed Clark an icepack. She then shuffled an array of small plastic bottles in her hands. She skipped past the bottle of Ibuprophen; that would have been bad, and opened the bottle labeled Acetaminophen instead. She shook two tablets onto Clark's left hand.

Looking around that motionless room, just by his feet, to the side was a very large, plastic hinged suitcase. It was drab olive green, in military fashion, and spray painted on it were large, white bold letters. It said U.K.088 - S.A.S. under an emblazed winged sword badge. Under that were the words PROPERTY OF THE QUEEN. The suitcase was half open, it's lid leaned against the couch, and inside was a vast assortment of bandages, plastic bags filled with clear fluid, bottles of what was likely medicines, horrendous metal tools - saws, scalpels, rubber tubes, forceps and the like. All surrounded by various other materials and sundries that Clark could probably guess their purpose. Just outside the fully stocked trauma kit was a worrisome translucent red plastic box filled with a handful of spent needles and syringes.

How can a weak looking, tiny boy like you be SO VICIOUS? To be so powerful… you have no mass, your upper body is so small… it is physically impossible.

Was that? WAS [that] the place you spent most of your time? In a dark place where there was no one else but you? Is this where people go when they are sad? There, in the 61st second? Was this how you used your godly technique to defeat your enemies? Where no one but you existed. It must be lonely – to be so great.

Here, no one could understand how great you had become. But now, finally, at long last I can UNDERSTAND how gifted you are. I wish I could be with you THERE in the DARK.

It was so dark there, and even though it is so cold there, I feel as if – that place – will take you higher. …and I want to be there, when THAT day comes.

…

1977 – the 6th day.

Because she told me so… she… "Clar wh don' yo jus si her fo… jus wai a momen…" It took all my strength and effort but I could barely parse that old lady's soft whispers. I had to blink my eyes in between the stinging pain in between my ears, but the bandage on my right eye seemed to do its job, and I could regain my bearings easier.

{Wait... Calm down,} "Calm dow…" Oh wait.. I spoke out loud again.

"Clark, honey why don't you just wait for moment…" Slowly the realization comes to me – that I am not dead – and likely not dying - my heartbeat calms down to a manageable pace – and I think the world is becoming clear and lucid once again… "Clark, just wait for moment."

…

Clark's head was throbbing in a numbing pain, and all he could do was teeter in place on his chair. In this dark room. Clark tilted his head up. "Oh, it's you…"

"King just stay there while I get some more bandages." His mother said out in the distance.

Clark hunched forward and pressed the cold ice bag on his temple. There he was, in a dark space - floating in a void in front of him was a 13-year-old King who sat cold and uncaring with his hands on his knees, staring back at Clark.

Clark looked at King with his one good eye.

King simply looked back with eyes glazed over in apathy.

"Haaaaghhhh…" Clark breathed out in a heavy sigh. He had finally given up and put both hands over his forehead, digging his fingers deep into his scalp. "This is all fucking useless." He cussed under his breath.

{Is this so fun to you?}

"What." Clark looked up at the sudden preposterous question; it had taken him a moment to understand what was going on – in that room where only two boys sat across from each other.

The END of La Bizarre Love Pentagon – part 29.

In nineteen-seventy-seven.

{Is this so fun to you?}

"What?" Clark shifted his pupils up to the very edge of its travel before it would roll into the back of his head. "What?"

At the end of Clark's gaze was the little boy King, hands on his knees and sitting upright now looking back at him. Just two blonde haired boys, sitting on wooden chairs floating in the darkness.

{This fighting… do you give up now?}

Was there a purpose to all of this?! What was the reason I've come this far in life?

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING ALL THIS FOR?

…

Dr. Richard Chan, our old friend, crossed his legs and put his clipboard over his right knee, clicking the top of his stubborn ballpoint pen in his right hand until finally the tip locked in the open position. "So, Master King," He said politely, "Can you tell me about this 'darkness'?"

King sat in a large air-conditioned room filled with fancy furniture of shiny chrome and glass. To his right was his father, the Knight – his arms crossed and the familiar Dr. Richard Chan in front of him who wore a very peculiar white coat. King's expression remained solid when he stared back at Dr. Chan, then when the doctor did not give way and only waited silently as he met King's gaze with the same stoic look, King put his hands on his knees and turned his head to the right towards his father.

"Go ahead." Knight said coldly. "Tell Dr. Chan the truth."

King looked back and faced forward. He puckered his lips and in a bout of slight frustration, but he finally gave up and did as he was told, "Sometimes, I go into a dark place…"

"A dark place?" Chan repeated. He imitated King's puckered lip and nodded his head up and down slightly in measured motions, and he probably did not even know he was doing it. "By 'dark place' do you meaaaaann…." Chan droned about, twirling his pen in the air, inviting the young King to expound on his statement.

King did not reply, he did not even offer the doctor the luxury of a sarcastic remark, though to be honest, the thought did not even once cross King's mind. King likely did not feel the need to further expound on his very clear and easy to understand statement.

"Okay…" Chan said calmly, breathing out, scribbling notes on his clipboard. "So, this… 'darkness'…" Chan spoke slowly, carefully measuring his words once again. He scratched the hairs forward of the tragus cartilage by his ear, where his sideburns would have been, with his thumb, with the same hand that held his pen. "This… place… I mean… Do you, so do you go INTO a place, or by 'go into the darkness' do you mean you think angry things?" Chan, growing weary of skirting the issue, simply went straight to the point.

As Clark's torso fell backwards, King vanished yet again – this time the afterimages rabidly jumping back and forth like a swarm of small insects driven mad and were now flying chaotically.

King remained frozen, sitting up straight in his chair. "No." He replied. "I go to a dark place, it looks like when I close my eyes, but I can still see…" King's voice was calm and steady, simple and plain – as if he had said 'My shoulder hurts when I raise my arm this way.'

Disappearing and reappearing erratically within your field of vision when your mortal eyes were unable to track them.

"Do you remember when you go into this dark place?"

It's a feint, King WILL attack from the opposite side.

"I go there… when I try to go fast."

King had disappeared – the sound of footsteps filled their minds when their ears took in the information, then, compressing it with both palms…

Fast. Very fast.

…then as if cutting six to eight inches of film from that long circular roll, they discarded that section, only to tape each of the severed strands of time together to allow it to flow yet again. A mid height left roundhouse kick hit his right eye, and Clark swore he could feel the eye socket of his skull give way with a forceful crunch.

"Okay, I understand," Richard Chan said in confirmation. He scribbled more notes. "So tell me, is there anybody else with you in this darkness?"

King did not immediately reply. Both the Knight and Chan stared down at the boy, and it was not apparently clear if the look on his face was King carefully measuring his reply or if it was simply the image of a small boy who did not understand the ridiculous notion of the question.

King, a very interesting boy, absolutely did not show any response to the question and remained still in silence, frustrating the two adults who could do nothing but obediently wait.

King stared forward, over Chan's shoulder.

Not completely ignorant as this story would like you to believe, Dr. Richard Chan immediately took notice of King's pupils that, for all intents and purposes looked the same, but somehow his gaze penetrated Chan's body and stared past him, behind him.

Chan unfolded his legs, put his clipboard on his lap, and, perhaps to humour both himself and his patient, put his right hand on the right side armrest on his chair to twist his upper body completely around. Though he had regretted it immediately when his body, not as young as it once thought it to be, retaliated with a painful ache.

The doctor looked over his shoulder and behind him was nothing but the neat array of books on the shelf that decorated his wall.

While the Knight looked down at the watch on his wrist restlessly, Chan held his posture, his upper body twisted in a tight corkscrew. He casually swiveled his head back to the left and swiveled his eyes in their sockets back at King whose face… The small boy to anyone else, looked the same, indifferent and somewhat restlessly mimicking his father, but there was something else. Chan was the only person in the room who noticed the boy's shoulders tense and rotate upwards ever so slightly.

Chan relaxed with a breath and looked back at King and Knight, giving them once again his undivided attention.

Behind Chan's shoulders, a heavy presence seemed to loom silently.

"King, is there someone…" Chan was about to repeat his question.

"No." King responded immediately now.

Chan leaned back on his chair and did not say anything.

A curious boy tilted his face on his neck much like the dislocated head of a tattered old rag doll, standing behind the doctor, and smiled at King with sharp serrated teeth clattering against each other. A smile illuminated the room that flickered back and forth between light and darkness, now.

No. There's nobody there.

"Okay King. Thank you." Chan sighed. He clipped his pen into his pocket after clicking it repeatedly as a nervous habit beforehand. "Mr. Knight, Oh, I have to talk to you about the insurance…" Chan said, slightly diverting his attention to the boy he smiled, "King, buddy… I just remembered, Debbie told me she bought a bunch of Halloween candy up at front, why don't you help her out, I need to talk to your dad about some boring stuff."

King finally broke himself from his petrified posture and looked to the right at his father.

"Go ahead, wait for me outside." Knight said. "Only two pieces candy, choose wisely."

King nodded slightly and pushed himself up and walked to the door. King, as much as he wanted to, refrained from letting out a seething hiss of frustration he so desperately wanted to do – it seemed like the entire world had forgotten he was already thirteen, and just shut the door behind him.

Chan waited a moment, casually letting a few minutes pass, before facing Knight once again when he was sure that King was clear outside his office.

"King-chan!" Debbie's muffled voice came through the door. "How are you? It's been…"

"What do you think doctor, is King…"

"I don't think it's a problem, Sir Knight." Chan said. "I… I don't think we can consider this a mental illness. There's absolutely nothing to worry about." Chan broke his gaze from the British gentleman and looked down at his notepad held tight on his clipboard. Dr. Richard Chan clicked the ballpen in his right hand and swirled it round and round on the paper. Round and round the world 'mental illness', then running a line through it. He then focused his vision onto another word. He put the tip of his pen on paper and carefully traced a rectangle around it repeatedly, drawing over the lines into bold face. Four lines drawn around its perimeter.

The word: [DARKNESS].

…

[That] question. For some odd reason my heart decided to take special notice. Scribbling notes on paper, and with carbon paper behind, it made a copy on the second sheet of bond paper underneath the short stack. I carefully filed the voice away in a very particular place in the back of my brain. It was in a distinct place, a place we, when we were children did not even realize then; it was a unique place – a place we would go to, we, now, weathered, beaten and lost, when we now had become bitter old men, we would stop and think – and thank ourselves – that we had done so, so we could have the ability to once again turn back time pleasantly at our leisure.

{Is this so fun to you?}

…so we could once again turn back time pleasantly at our leisure. …As a RESTITUTION for sins we committed long past, and for the joys we had foolishly allowed to slip between our fingers when we were children.

"What?" Clark shifted his pupils up to the very edge of its travel before it would roll into the back of his head. "What?"

At the end of Clark's gaze was the little boy King, hands on his knees and sitting upright now looking back at him. Just two blonde haired boys, sitting on wooden chairs floating in the darkness.

{This fighting… do you give up now?}

"No it's not." Clark murmured with his fist curling on his knees.

{…and the silence, like a CANCER, grows…} Clark, clenching both fists, hissed with a soft voice that could hardly be heard by anyone else except only by him when the seething rancor blared so loudly in his brain.

What was that? Was that a question? Are these voices just ringing in my head? For some reason I've tried to catch myself and try to not talk out loud – this HORRIBLE habit - and now it seemed like I was responding to silent sounds rattling in my mind. What the hell is happening? Am I suffering from a mental disease?

"Haaaghhhh…" Clark's breath dropped to the bottom of his diaphragm. "You will never understand." When your LIFE is judged and measured simply by FIGHTING, yet, you're battered senseless for 6 days non-stop... "What good am I? After trying SO hard." When you devoted your entire life to fighting and killing, yet you were so easily defeated by a small boy, Clark cradled his face in his arms and sunk deep into the dark pool between his knees.

A boy bred for fighting, killing other children, killing and fighting defined everything.

"Don't think you're so great and fucking fantastic, King." Clark said, sitting in that chair, his head wrapped in bandages and his cheeks plastered with patches. "You don't understand what I've been though."

"Bullshit."

The space in between Clark's brows furrowed all of a sudden – Clark denied it at first, but after collecting his thoughts he was sure, that the voice he heard, was real, and not his own. It was a rough and raspy voice from across him; he could not begin to believe that he was somehow granted the honour of hearing King's voice once again in the same day.

At the end of Clark's gaze was the little boy King, hands on his knees and sitting upright now looking back at him. Just two blonde haired boys, sitting on wooden chairs floating in the darkness.

The ABILITY to cross the boundary of reality. I think I finally understand you. The lonely torment of having to walk all alone. I wish I can share this with you… so you can know, that you are not alone… What do you feel when you 'run' in the darkness?

[The sequence of nine.] I think I understand it now.

…

Floating in the dark, trapped in the past.

ARE YOU SAD?

"Ughk." Clark felt a large mass hit his left cheek, turning his head around.

1993.

JUST LIKE ME?

"Why do you keep on fighting?" King asked. The question. Again and again.

The next instant another massive attack. A solid hit with the equivalence of a 10 pound sledgehammer swung at 20 miles an hour, impacted his right chin, launching his head up, with an effective damage of approximately 134 Foot-Pounds. Clark stumbled back one then two steps – already he was slowly losing the ability to cognitively parse commands.

BOTH OF US, FORCED TO FIGHT… BY ADULTS?

His left ribs shook and felt as if they shattered, making him cringe and grit his teeth hard.

ARE YOU SICK?

An impact just under his right breast, making him reel as the sensation of all his pronged ribs contracted all at once into his internal organs.

AND ARE YOU TIRED?

The left side of his face again. Then the right.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU…

His body swang left and right like a wet rag doll that NOBODY LOVED ANYMORE.

THAT I COULD…

"GHHHAAGGHHKK!" Clark's mouth opened as he hunched forward, a mixture of saliva and blood overflowed over the edge of his lips, his lungs were so battered it was in complete disarray and inhaled and exhaled at the same time.

IF I COULD END ALL WAR… WILL, WILL YOU HELP ME?

YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO'S SUFFERED.

"Hehheh heh… King." Clark laughed silently holding back the sickening, twisting, wretched feeling that was about to come out his stomach. "I am so weak." No matter how much I tried, no matter how much I suffered, no matter how I felt jaded, tormented, how so very much I suffered… All I could do was FIGHT! Yet, you took it all away from me. I feel SO SO WEAK. SO USELESS now. There is no way I can help you… I am so severely depressed… and… I just want to die. I want to DIE.

…

Chapter 115: and You and I.

{This fighting… do you give up now?}

Was there a purpose to all of this?! What was the reason I've come this far in life?

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING ALL THIS FOR?

"I… I give up Sir Knight." A young boy's voice finally broke the Knights hard concentration; and from a swirling vortex that sought to drive a guilty nail into his heart the man was brought back to the waking world. Because he knew what he had done. Except this time – it was different. There's a hole. The boy rambled out loud. "I can't fight your son." Clark's hands shivered with fingers interwoven with each other. Squeezing tight.

I don't know, but it's just… just that I'm tired. As if I realized that I went the wrong way.

"Clark…" Knight said firmly and slowly, trying to reel Clark back in.

Why am I even fighting?

To live in war. I once believed that there was no purpose so PURE than to fight for survival. In so doing, I thought that MY fighting was the greatest.

{But when I see [HIM], your son.} Despite him being so small and weak to my eyes, he seems to possess an inhuman ability that could not be gained from perseverance alone. Truly he is gifted by GOD. …and could it be GOD'S purpose to stamp down humanity desires?

I believed that my cause was pure and it was JUST. But could it be? That you, a boy who lived in the lap of luxury have a greater purpose?

What greater purpose do you have that you've become greater than me?

Show me.

When I see that perfect fighting body…

SHOW ME.

I get so afraid.

Why do I still fight? What am I doing [here]? Clark stared at the ground, understanding fully the futility that was the failed result from the ultimate sum of his life's actions.

Is this all fear?

…or maybe, perhaps, this is what SHAME feels like? Between you and I…

What PURPOSE do you serve, that, could be HIGHER than mine?

Clark gnashed his teeth down with a veracity that could turn even granite to powder.

…only you.

…

He then focused his vision onto another word. He put the tip of his pen on paper and carefully traced a rectangle around it repeatedly, drawing over the lines into bold face. Four lines drawn around its perimeter.

The word: [DARKNESS].

…

In this darkness. For a moment. Only you and I exist here.