The Colour Purple Chapter 116: the Weathermen, 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]

1971.

"ENOUGH! I can't take it anymore, Papa!" I said. With that kitchen knife in my hand, I pulled my head aside by my hair and placed that cold blade next to my neck. "NO MORE! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!" the seven year old boy cried.

But instead, [his] answer sent a cold shock through my already weak body.

"Fine," my father said. Cold and uncaring, he simply turned around and sat on his chair nonchalantly, legs crossed from the far side of the room as I stood by the doorframe, legs shivering. "Fine, if you want to do it… then DO it, but let me warn you," he said, "Let me assure you, that if you do [it], there is NO guarantee, that I will be the [wrong] one."

Sometimes, to prove that you were RIGHT, you simply have to prove that everyone else was WRONG. That I believed. However, if you choose this road, then you are a coward.

There is no guarantee that you will die a saint, that people will revere you if you take your own life.

Without a retort, without a firm, reasonable reply, because I was young and ignorant, my will folded, my knees buckled and I couldn't do anything else. I knelt helplessly and instead, cried yet again.

{WHEN I FIRST FELT [IT] OVERCOME ME?}

So I screamed. I screamed so loud, until I couldn't think anymore, I SCREAMED SO LOUDLY TO DEAFEN MYSELF, that I couldn't hear anymore, and nothing else mattered. I couldn't breathe, because – I came to realize that he was [right]. He was [right] once again.

…and 6 years later, I wondered to myself, what would happen… if I made the rest of the world feel the same way I did? Back THEN. In order to have been RIGHT back then, THEN the rest of the world has to be proven WRONG.

The END of La Bizarre Love Pentagon – part 30.

…

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.

I get so afraid.

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.

To become more powerful than me, what even greater reason do YOU fight for, King?

"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.

Ah I see… that's sad. King stood up. But, halfway, the boy, King eased his shoulders and sat back down. "To stop war, what if…".

"What if I told you…"

Clark tilted is face up again from that dark quagmire he wanted to drown in.

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

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

…

{What if I told you I could end all war? What would you say?}

"I don't…" Clark whispered. Wedging voices in between the screaming thoughts in his mind.

Prove to me…

IF YOU HATE WAR, THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

…

She curled her arms over the plastic box and pulled it close to her chest, Feeling content to stay in place just for a moment from the other side of the room. Peeking over the doorframe she could not help but crack a slight unsure smile.

"What's wrong, mama…" Knight…

"Shh!" His wife was quick to turn around and placed an imaginary finger over her husband's lips.

"Wh…"

"SH!" She commanded tersely, though keeping the volume low so no one else could hear. "Seisyun da yo ne…"

The flavour that swirled over Knight's face was both sour and bitter – absolutely unsure as to what had just happened. Taken absolutely aback, he was not entirely sure what had just transpired between him and his ordinarily reserved wife.

Knight dug deep in his brain, the rusty cogs slowly turning to parse the foreign words his wife said. "A springtime, of youth?" He whispered apprehensively.

His wife only smiled warmly and crossed her arms a little bit tighter.

"Honey…"

"Yes?" Knight was eager to welcome the interruption in his thought.

"It's wonderful that King can make a friend. Look at them…"

Knight did not say anything; he tried his best to understand where his wife was leading him. Knight was not completely sure what she was talking about. What had transpired the last few minutes were a string of disjointed sentences between his child and that boy, Clark.

Numerous words linked together, but when laid across a table, it did not seem to resemble a comprehensible conversation. The Knight was confused.

"What."

"Bullshit."

"I don't understand."

"What if I told you?"

"You don't understand."

"War."

"King, I don't…"

"Are you happy that you married a nurse?" She said longingly.

"Thank you mama." Knight let himself go for a moment in time and draped his arm, letting his hard exterior crack a bit when he was absolutely, just when he was certain no one, not even invisible ghosts could see him do so – he slowly and gingerly draped his arm over the only woman he ever loved.

"Do you remember, when we were younger…" She asked sweetly. The wonderful eruption of flavour in her mouth absolutely enveloped her tingling body now. "Honey."

Knight breathed in, and though strange and bewildering, he let himself be and flashed slightly, what resembled a small smile. He pulled her close, and with that plastic box of bandages on her chest she warmly allowed herself to be enslaved to his embrace.

Do you remember?

When we were young?

"How we could talk to each other," She reminisced. "When we were together, we could read each others' minds? I could hear what you thought…"

Knight gnashed his molars down and puckered his lips together. Though the Knight was who he was, when silence would have served sufficient – a more prudent choice, he, an idiot of a man, could not help but speak.

"I don't think I know what you are talking about? Knight loosened his grip and looked his wife in the eye.

A petrified look of fright rushed across his wife's face. Initially it was a look of suffocation, but, it was quickly replaced when she turned her face back at her husband.

"Ag,ff." Knight was about to scream but thought better of it and ate his words. Just at the last second, from decades of intense training, he was able to put his right hand over his testicles just before his wife rammed her fist backwards targeting the area between his legs.

{MAMA!} the Knight's mind SCREAMED through the look in his peeled eyes.

Justified in her fearlessness, just this once, the Knight's wife pouted and allowed herself to become lost in what unfolded in front of her.

During a time, long before today, did you not think, that, when we were together, we could hear each other? Even when words… words that were easily superficial and hypocrite…

Indeed, the silent THINGS in between our voices, brought us closer together.

In this PLACE, just outside of the darkness. Devoid of light. Between YOU and I?

And God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' Genesis 1:26.

…

"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.

Knight held his breath for a moment but let it out with a sigh of relief. He took another sip of his beer straight from the bottle and grinned a little bit for good measure. "Ya, don't think too much about it. King is MY child after all… and even if…" Knight stopped mid sentence, looking at the boy who gazed blankly outwards. Clark was lost and was likely deaf to anything the old man was saying.

"…CLARK!" Knight said the third time now, firmly.

The blonde haired boy tightened his shoulders but held his posture, and who knows, he was probably trying to keep his composure so that the Knight would not realize that he had momentarily lost focus and was not paying attention to anything he said seconds before.

"Are you okay?" He said, even though he already knew the answer.

"I'm okay sir…" He replied, even though he was a bad liar.

Knight looked down at the boy and wordless, Clark held his lethargic lean with both palms behind him as he sat on the sidewalk. Women likely often wonder why men go through great lengths to keep their words inside, let it fester and ravage their insides with an almost masochistic habit. This is simply an ultimate truth – and the distinct difference between men and women. In truth, none of the words they exchanged during the last 10 minutes even really mattered. Like two introverts in an elevator, talking about the weather, discussing meaningless nothings, and matters of insignificant importance.

Nothing mattered, and these petty social conventions were just a way to mask that innate instinct to want to wallow in pity and suffer valiantly in silence.

Shuffling back and forth in place, the silence that loomed between the Knight and Clark was a tremendous weight to bear, and soon enough it had become so hard to breathe. The bitter fluids that collected in the bottom of his gut made Clark sick, and rendered his extremities cold. The swirling anxiety in his inner core was absolutely horrendous – and the way this venom kills is equally insidious.

Clark had hunched forward now, elbows on his knees, he wrapped his one palm over the back of his other, scratching his knuckles, alternating his hands, scratching, clawing nervously in tune with his rapidly racing heartbeat. Then came the low hum that slowly and steadily grew into a heavy, painful static. Driving nails into his mind – IT came to visit him again.

Like an old friend.

One he thought he had left behind, but in the end, he could never escape.

Until one or the other DIES.

{Don't talk... don't talk out loud, don't,} Clark reminded himself incessantly, "Don't…" {Don't.} "Don't… I can't…" flashing pictures, a hammer beating into the side of his skull.

Was this what happens? Was this what happened to THEM? Was this…

…a slight hum, then building to a louder and louder static – a mounting pressure that made him feel like his ears were bleeding. He wrapped his one palm over the back of his other, scratching his knuckles, alternating his hands, scratching clawing nervously in tune with his rapidly racing heartbeat. Until. Until the heartbeat was a raging storm that was ready to hurl him from the edge of sanity.

Was this what happens? When you come face to face with a SUPERIOR BEAST?!

As fiction, preposterous and hyperbolic as it is, ridiculous and petty; but much like how there is always a bit of tragedy masked in comedy, fiction, it still mimics reality. Because when we stepped into THIS place, we lost our grip on reality and dignity.

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!

Scratching his knuckles, digging his nails into his flesh with such agony and fervor, it seemed easier to peel his flesh from the back of his hand …and then, when he could endure not a second longer…

The distinct – slightly sour, but inevitably, the finality of a sweet taste erupted in his mouth. The cold, lifeless muzzle of that pistol placed itself onto the side of the boy's temple.

…and it was quiet once again.

"if you do [it], there is NO guarantee, that I will be the [wrong] one."

…

"Why don't you rest up, boy. Go back home, heal and come back again to train with us, we will be waiting for…" Knight…

I get so afraid.

Did I FIGHT so hard? But in the end it was so MEANINGLESS?

No… I think, this isn't fear. Maybe I am confusing this sensation with something else more loathsome...

Maybe this feeling I feel, is not that… maybe this thing I feel… is SHAME.

I do not want to die.

…

It is loathsome for an introvert to talk about the weather. He absolutely and positively ABHORS talking to a person who is frankly, uninterested in what he has to say, but simply waits for their turn to reply, and speaks for the sake of talking. SO it follows that, the most HORRENDOUS task in the world could very well be – being forced to talk about something he, himself, has no interest in discussing just to skirt an issue or fill in the gap where silence would have sufficed.

…

I do not want to die.

The sound of static and ear piercing screeches began to build – in a mounting pressure that made the boy grasp his head, hold it in, because it was about to explode and there was absolutely nothing he could do to STOP it.

When he could absolutely TAKE no MORE. The world came to a screeching halt and instantaneously stopped rotating and revolving. In doing so, the simple rule of inertia governed and all the men on Earth were launched upwards from their seat of apathy.

{I GIVE UP! I GIVE UP! YOU HEAR ME!?}

"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.

…and do you remember those times, when you spent seconds, hours and minutes going back and forth, not knowing what to do. Caught between the stalemate of desperation and logic.

When facing out that vast divide – two cliffs with your toes at the ledge. Pride and fear were at a stalemate. Then. When you no longer wanted to rationalize it any longer…

When a boy thought – that life was petty – and useless. Indeed…

…

'The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves VIOLENCE His soul hates.' Psalm 11:5

…

It was not FEAR. It was SHAME. I just want to curl into a wretched ball.

"Is that why those two boys killed themselves, and that one guy is now a vegetable?" Clark sighed. "Don't worry sir, Heidern chose ME… I'm not that weak." Clark shook his head and began to mumble to himself – as though he wanted to forget what he just said and pretend nothing had happened.

"Haaaghhh…" Knight let out a long heavy breath, forcefully relaxing his body that had corkscrewed at the bottom of his spine 10 times over from the mounting panic and tension. "I know you're strong, boy. I know that for a fact. Don't you EVER forget THAT. There would have been no way for you to survive 6 days with King otherwise."

"I… I just… don't want to die."

Knight looked back at Clark, a bit confused and perplexed.

"You must not only break their BODIES, you must also CRUSH their spirit…" Clark BIT down hard, turned around and glared firmly at the knight with eyes like harpoons desperately clinging to the shores of rationality.

…

It had been so long ago but it was clear still in that old man's mind, because he had taken the time, and the effort to keep that memory close to his heart. In a country and a world lost in conflict two boys in a different place and a different time. Stared at each other, and believed that what would happen next would be the END of the WORLD.

"Heidern!" One German child soldier lay with his cheek on the ground desperately looking up at their last hope just as it had become so hard to breathe and his heartbeat began to slow. And in front of the slender dark haired 14 year old boy was a similarly aged, but chiseled, large muscled British teen who took a familiar stance of American kickboxing. We fought a war for adults, but it did not matter – because inside, we were fighting our own war.

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.

In 1944, World War 2. A British monster came face to face with a German animal. From this instant, generations after would be subject to the burden brought about by their choices.

…and once again, from a temporary stand-still - the world turns anew.

A Bizarre Love Pentagon – rotating the world on its axis with the motion of a crippled leper.

Back then, two BOYS came face to face with each other. THEY thought 1944 would be the END of the world. However now, amidst apathy, in a generation DEVOID of MEANING. It would truly be a luxury if [we] could experience such a wonderful purpose in our lifetimes.

"Hey… com'mon!" The British teen grinned, curling the fingers of his right palm in.

The lack of PURPOSE was what caused idle boys to pursue ANYTHING… even evil.

…

Chapter 116:

The look of awe and shock ran across the Knights face immediately, "How did you…" How did you know that? Did…

"I don't know." Clark mused. "When I'm alone with King, fighting with him – I don't hear any words but my body 'felt' [it]." An idea, a concept, a sensation, again and again repeating and repeating over and over again in my mind. Even if there were no words, you know, when your body 'understands' a concept, but your mind can't seem to remember the correct word designated to it? "It's kind of like that." Again and again I understood 'those words' that run across my thoughts. Enveloping it, consuming it, filling the darkness with it.

"Well forget about it, son." Knight cut Clark short. Knight did not notice himself say [that] word, but Clark did, and a warm feeling ran up his back and filled that large hole in his heart if only for a slight momentary instant. He smiled innocently, because Knight probably did not notice it. "Why don't you rest and recover for a few weeks, and maybe we can have you back to fight again after the new year, what do you think about…"

"I am going to give up [fighting], Sir Knight." Clark, finally, liberated from all thoughts of shame, said matter of factly. By saying those sad words, somehow he felt that he could let go of the weight on his shoulders that chained him to the regrets of yesterday.

"A." Knight said, and though a rapture of thoughts surged from his mind, only that one simple sound was able to make it out his lips as voice. As the moments passed, they felt like an eternity, so many things he wanted to say layers and upon layers of feelings and emotions, but in the end, it all was for naught.

I see.

"Agghhh…" Clark cussed with a slight mix of fluster and frustration in his voice, and though it was hardly a show of courage he DID say it. "There, I said it." The boy said firmly and frankly. Hiding behind weak chuckles just moments after he simply forced himself to jump off the edge in the middle of arguing with himself. While the angel and devil on his shoulders twisted his heart and screamed at each other feverisly on his shoulders – he simply had, had enough and made a split second decision when he decided he no longer wanted to take the time to untangle a ball of string that had knots upon knots – tying itself in a clump of mind numbing chaos. "I am NOT going to fight again."

Auuughhhh… Clark wheezed – letting his upper back grow limp and look upwards. {I don't know what I'm going to say to the Commander.}

…

In 1994, in front of cabinets made of plastic and metal, we played a GAME. This game, that somehow, by its strange and divine power plucked us from our sadness and laid us in a place where we could somehow forget the trials that had plagued us two days before. This game was the King of Fighters. In 1994, just as long as we had the time and we fed quarters into that slot that promised us a world far different from our own, you and I stayed there, waiting…

Back in 1994 if you pressed those buttons A + B + C simultaneously, a small meter beneath the screen filled with red fire, a fire and a RAGE that reflected the heart we kept secret from those around us. We slammed our fingers on those three buttons until – a reward for our courageous struggles would give us a POWer labeled with MAXIMUM. However – but, however, there were a few boys that even when that meter was at its limit KEPT ON pressing those buttons. Pressing on those plastic things because they felt that they had not sufficiently transferred the RAGE in their hearts into an inanimate object. PILEDRIVING those three fingers, never satisfied until their fingertips could feel the ground beneath their feet.

Repeatedly. Again. AGAIN. And AGAIN.

"Clark…" Knight said again, "If you rest and…"

"STOP!" Clark roared. "STOP! SHUT UP! Don't you UNDERSTAND me? I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE. Don't you UNDERSTAND WHAT…" Clark again and again… again and again repeatedly HAMMERED three fingers into those plastic buttons. Eventhough the screen told him he had done enough, well enough, he did not stop, he would not stop until he would DESTROY that machine. Clark repeatedly drove his fingertips into the arcade shelf in front of him eventhough it was useless. "WHY? WON'T YOU…"

Ten fingers wrapped themselves around that wooden bannister above. Gripping it, slowly crushing it.

Clark's thoughts were immediately interrupted when two strong arms wrapped themselves over his shoulders. They took him off balance and pulled him tight. Clark's arms were still hanging limp by his sides and he could not understand what was going on. The Knight curled his arms around Clark and held him tight.

…

Chapter 116: the Weathermen

Knight did not notice himself say [that] word, but Clark did, and a warm feeling ran up his back and filled that large hole in his heart if only for a slight momentary instant.

An entire world above the Knight and Clark, [he] took a step back, and pushed those three buttons in unison as well. Until the very moment when blood erupted from his neck…

…IN AN ABHORRENT; UNCONTROLLABLE; RAGE!

Perhaps you thought nothing of it – and what you DID was nothing short of talking about the weather. However, even if it was nothing… By one word alone, you had brought about, the END of days. A small boy on that second story balcony, behind another silent boy stood in the shade of darkness, smiling wide, with a Cheshire grin that could only exist when a knife cut its flesh from ear to ear.

…

But instead, [his] answer sent a cold shock through my already weak body.

Ten fingers wrapped themselves around that wooden bannister above. Gripping it, slowly crushing it. Into soft splintering pieces.

In 1977, we experienced the END of days, once again.