The Colour Purple Chapter 125: the Monster in times of need, 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]

Oftentimes as adults, we tend to revisit a certain place. The air is replaced with rancid feelings of shame, regret, guilt, anger – and a myriad of other similarly negative emotions. An embarrassing display in grade school in front of everyone who probably all but forgot about it by now; to the harsh, hurtful words you told your parents in a fit of rage as a teen; or simply, quite simply when you betrayed your lover in college and wondered how life would have been different had you chosen a different path.

While understandably, this monster defines who you are now as an adult, and on occasion even protects your dignity in times of need; This beast will never die if you refuse to stop feeding it.

{I'm back here again. Aren't I?} Yuri sighed. This place again. (74).

Before she knew it - she found herself in a horrid, yet familiar place. A dark room in the 1980s; her now outdated clothing, and permed long hair that was curled in tune with the current fashion. {Why are you STILL here?} The young girl talked AT herself in the third person.

However, this time, the door was open…

Small scraps of dignity. Cut, split, subdivided into small pieces – we – we were BOTH kept alive by the same THING. As we clung pitifully to life.

AN ATTACK. That separated itself from all other. A WONDERFUL, MYSTICAL, BEWILDERING, DEVASTATING FORCE… That could confront and maybe even perhaps, overcome the RESTRICTIONS placed upon reprehensible mortals by 'The Rule'. A destructive FORCE of nature. Finally rendering 'the mass balance' irrelevant…

"A fighting based on HATRED – you've shown your true colours now. And, it's people like you that make it impossible for children to break away from this violent cycle!"

…

As an aftershock to Yuri's last punch, Clark's navy blue hat flew up in the air, stopping at its apex – feeling the cool breeze and the slight pitter pat of rain sound out in titter tattering sounds. As it floated up in the dark early morning sky. Finally, freed from the slavery of the past times long forgotten.

Taking the full brunt of the attack, spending no time to even bother to defend, Clark slipped forward, unhindered by Yuri's full power punch to his left temple and in reply the blonde haired man swerved his upper torso clockwise before twisting oppositely uncoiled, hurtling a solid right fist once again with enough force to kill a grown man, into Yuri's midsection.

A sword momentarily lent to him by God, Clark would cleave Yuri in half.

"A." Clark's knuckles moved forward half an inch into Yuri's stomach, but, then stopped dead in its tracks.

Yuri, once again - the ebb and flow of time slowed by a heavy static and friction – she looked down on her stomach that for sure was crushed and destroyed, yet it remained unmoving – firmly rooted in place.

She exhaled, the mist became visible in this cold, dark morning. Floating in mid air just as it recovered from its previous attack, her entire body was frozen in place and did not move even as it felt the full, unadulterated brunt of Clark's sure and certain counterattack.

Clark's thought process stuttered to a halt. Conventional practice dictated that Clark had to immediately withdraw his punch, either swerve and follow up with a left or simply put both hands up in defense, however the mere fact that Yuri had not been cut in half or hurled backwards as she had been before – this was the most logical and predictable answer to the grown man's attack – the clear fact that she was still standing and took the full force of his punch was too bewildering to comprehend that Clark simply stood there. The mechanical stream of consciousness, like the flow of water from a faucet trembled and gurgled, knocking a hammering sound within the copper pipes. His mind was unable to comprehend why she was still there standing upright and Clark, like each of us had felt at least once before, froze in place in utter confusion. His right fist remained floating in front of Yuri's stomach.

The once drizzling rain began to drop at a more feverish pace. Their clothes began to sag slightly and reminded them that time continued to flow at a normal pace eventhough their consciousness seemed to rush at breakneck speeds.

Move.

Clark shuffled his left foot instinctively when the rain hit his face, pleading him awake. However, when he took a half step to the side, a sharp piercing pain drove a long steel spike transversely across his brain. {NNGG!} Not again. {Not this… Agai…} The man's shoulders tensed, and all the muscles in his body twisted into knots, up until the instant, like a light switch flicked off, his body cramped simultaneously and refused to heed his commands as his will, a floating globular white ball of flame floated into his midsection, but could not successfully relay the last order.

…

Yuri's punch came into contact bone to bone, instantly rendering Clark's mind a stark white blank slate.

{A!}

…

With a slight delay – truly impressive he could still move after the initial attack, but the blow that Clark took earlier, squarely on his temple, had finally caught up with him.

Even as the screams in his mind made his ears bleed at the strain, commanding him to MOVE, Clark was petrified in place, momentarily confused as what to do next because the predetermined script he held in his mind did not go as he had originally planned. Even as Yuri cocked her right fist up and when it crossed the horizon of her eyes, it pulled back once again, trembling in lustful eagerness, with what seemed like a slow gingerly pace of eternity up to her temples, Clark stared back in disbelief, because this was not supposed to happen.

All apprehension, all the doubt and all the fear was completely washed away from the young girl's eyes now as she stared back at her enemy with clear purpose. Yuri shifted her left shoulder forward and her right shoulder back in slow equal fashion now that – with both their minds running at the speed of light that their bodies seemed to dwell in viscous molasses, time seemed to occur at a ridiculous, painfully slow pace.

As if to respond, a slave to the quotient brought about by conflicting rules – the equation that should not exist – the rain stopped immediately. It was as if the heavens sucked up the water up, back into the clouds in reverse.

Yuri gnashed her teeth against each other wanting to grind them into small nubs. Viciously, she curled her fingertips inwards, as if to crush a small animal mercilessly within her fist with great voracity and rancor.

Congruent with the era – was this a 'mechanical error'? What happened, so devastating that Clark could no longer move? Or was it a 'syntax error'? Something so wrong had occurred within the delegation that rotated the Earth that the flow of time, confused, skipped and linked uncoordinated frames with each other, like crumpled videotape. The world in front of Clark's eyes turned into jagged static enveloped by white noise. Pictures jumping back and forth seconds in between the arrangement of normal animation. Just like that old and forgotten VHS player. And you did not know what to do. HELPLESS when that MACHINE devoured everything at its whim.

She pulled her fist as far back as it would go and the entire world became pitch black. When faced with an adversary so great – bio mechanics dictate that ones vision turns to target focus and your mind entirely blocks out everything in its peripheral. The only thing you can see is a small pinpoint thing in front of you. This thing was Clark's face. And, as that small innocent animal that slithered helplessly trapped in Yuri's fist begged for it's life – the girl was immune and deaf to its shrieks of terrible pain. All that remained was the warm blood that seethed though the small gaps in between, and dripped onto the floor like crimson teardrops.

TENCHI. HAA…OUUUU… Yuri's lips puckered out, silently mouthing those syllables with a low and loud otherworldly boom.

Lord my God, give me strength… however, even if [you] are NOT God – I will accept your gift all the same… If you promise to make my wish come true.

…

Takuma Sakazaki leaned back and turning his face to the right ever so slightly, he looked upon that wine glass filled with a red liquid he promise he would not ever touch again – but – as he laid that glass down, a sudden shock pierced the back of his neck. Takuma reached for the back of his neck instinctively, massaging it to numb the pain as if he had just been stung by a venomous wasp. He was confused at first but after a few seconds he stopped, eyes glazed wide open as he looked upwards in realization… Instinctively he knew deep down what [this] was.

…

THAT window. There was no answer. Robert tried to carefully walk over to the closed bathroom door, as retold from many chapters before…

"I..." Yuri began to say then stopped. A jarring impact hit the side of her skull with the strength to induce a fierce concussion. She stood in place with her hand on her temple, just like that one time when you sneezed so hard you had forgotten what you were doing seconds prior.

Yuri shuffled her feet, not really understanding what she was doing in that dark den in La Bijoux. She felt out of place – as if something important had been cut away like a chunk of meat from the records of history.

Robert stretched his arms out wide and took a step forward to hug Yuri, but instead, the girl took two sudden steps back and raised her open right palm up. "Wait, what are you doing, #ert e$r*b&." The last word that came out of Yuri's lips was perplexing and strange – it was a collection of sounds that could not be typed with discernible letters. "What." Yuri stammered when she looked downwards and to the side in confusion. "What, what did…"

As if something was wrong, this memory clouded her mind like the picture of chaotic steel wool. "What are you, doing… What…" Yuri stopped mid speech. "…are you…?"

When Yuri looked up from her confusion there was a dark and empty room with nothing but lifeless furniture to keep her company, and she wondered to herself who she was talking to as there was no one else there in front of her.

…

And, as that small innocent animal that slithered helplessly in Yuri's fist begged for it's life – the girl was immune and deaf to its pitiful shrieks of pain.

TENCHI. HA…OOOUUUGH…! Yuri's lips puckered out, silently mouthing those syllables.

"KYOKUGEN…" HISSATSU SAIKYOU OUGI! When Yuri could no longer hold back the mounting, coiling tension in her biceps that were about to explode, she unleashed an attack – a missile of rage that only had one task, one simple purpose in its small and easy to understand existence. To destroy Clark's face – her natural enemy – the reason she existed – the one thing that prevented her from being alive.

Cerulean – a deep blue in colour – like the clear sky, that enticed yet mocked us as we stayed chained to the Earth. This was the sensation that erupted in Yuri's mind.

The END of La Bizarre Love Pentagon – part 39.

The camera that recorded the wills of the world locked on Yuri's face, but immediately swerved, rotating over and over – alternating between Clark's and Yuri's visage, around and round their bodies as it rocketed up into the air then dropped down to Clark's frightful expression, now transformed into black and white, its silhouette rendered into a charcoal sketch.

I am going to die. That much he knew. If he did nothing Clark was sure that – that oncoming onslaught would decapitate him on the spot. However, his body would simply not move and was two, three, far too many steps behind – utterly unable to catch up and tip the balance of time and motion back in his favour.

But even when my commander, Marcus pointed that gun at me, did I feel sad? Or did I feel relieved – that I would be freed from this tedious existence?

If that attack connects, and even IF I block… {I am going to die…} Clark thought – this much he knew. But even if he repeated that mantra again and again to himself, his body was still too far behind in that race to regain physical bodily reaction.

…

Do I care about my life? Honestly, I don't really care. I mean, after all this… everyday.

Everyday was a constant stream of meaningless labours.

To wake up, to eat, shit then sleep and then to repeat it all… Agghhhh…. Agh.. I am so tired of it all. Why do I even do this, even when I know that the instinct of survival all animals are cursed with, really hold no relevant value.

I really never cared about it… really…

…

"A." I think I understand it now.

…

"Hey. You need someone to teach you how to use scissors?" Clark jeered.

With his right hand, King grasped a pair of splayed scissors like a knife, paying no care eventhough the one bare blade dug into the insides of his four wrapped fingers.

Clark stood in the doorway, unwilling to look away, and locked his gaze into King.

…

Now that I think about it, when I have the time to muse upon my past mistakes – because my mind operates so fast at the luxury of a slow world that skips and stutters like a broken record… I think I always understood it. When I turned my nose up to you – back then…

I MOCKED you, King… because I did not want to ACCEPT that I agreed with you, but, I did not have the courage to take my own life too. SO I mocked you… I ridiculed you.

A life devoid of meaning. Was that not the THING you tried to tell me?

…When you wanted to slit your wrist, when [I] appeared in your life?

In reality… I wanted to JOIN you. Then.

…

From the protection of that hallway, just by the eaves of that doorframe, the young boy, Clark was fearful to cross. Even when he wanted to tell [her] – even when he twisted his mouth to say the opposite of what he thought – that he wanted to put his arms around her, and join her.

To escape it all…

…

I really never cared about it… really…

"Kill that nigger, and I promise I will not kill you." He said, his glowing eyes and smile radiated his dark shadowy face from the darkness. Clark's eyes, in familiar fashion, drooped down to his enemy's left breast and there again was that nametape. …and it said, as it did a half a decade ago; 'HEIDERN' it read.

Was I really thankful for another day, because of him?

When an adult pointed a gun at me, and they told me… that I must be their slave.

The dark skinned nameless man went for his pistol with his right hand and in a twinkling, its muzzle was poised over Clark's heart. Just stay the way you are.

Clark wheezed then grit his teeth. His commander… was going to shoot him.

Just stay the way you are. With you in between Heidern and me, there was no way he could kill me, before I shoot through you, and kill him. IT'S OVER! "You lose, you dirty mercenary dog."

Nobody cared about ME, so why should I care for anything? No one will be sad if I died… So why? Why am I even here? Fighting a little girl? A little girl, who, instead of trying on pretty dresses, worrying about her future, or is wondering to herself during the late dark evenings, how it really feels to experience true love – instead, she is trying to KILL me?

If I release myself, let myself forget about my pride as a man – since it is all meaningless anyways. No one will be truly sad if I died. Surely, my parents who never even wanted to look for me – Heidern, will forget me – even to the Knight, I would simply be a passing folly. NO ONE CARES – so why should I care?

"Why do you even care… Clark Steel?" You and I are the same.

…

"But. However. Even then…" IT said with a smile and grin.

Tiny morsels that could barely keep his soul alive, only on those bitter rancid pieces, did he survive this long. TO give up fighting was to CEASE living. Even when his mind and body already accepted it.

Two, invisible arms wrapped themselves tightly around Clark's shoulders. Pulling himself in a warm embrace he did not ask for.

{A.}

…

"The defense?" Clark repeated with a blank stare, only to be interrupted by King obediently taking both of Clark's wrists and lifting them up temple high before Clark could even realize King had grabbed him.

"Your hands…" King mumbled under her breath. As instructed by her father, she firmly grabbed both of the teenage Clark's wrists, in 1977. "Raise them… Reach out…" King began to swerve her arms, round and round – coercing Clark's hands to weave a slow and steady figure 8 defense in the air.

{Will you join me?}

{What.} HE thought silently.

{What if I told you… If…}

Just like an innocent playground game, between a boy and a girl, like a silly dance weaved their fingers together and rotated their hands like wisps in the air around, tracing small and large circles in front of them in synchronicity.

In order to make yourself STRONGER. You have to make your enemy, STRONGER also.

"If you want it…" Reach out and take it. King said flatly.

…

DID YOU FORGET?

…

"Did you forget… so easily… the promise you made to me?" HER voice asked.

Just because, just because you and I MET here – perhaps our chance meeting, allowed us to remain alive all this time…. And does that not…?

Does that not seem so very BEAUTIFUL to you?

…

Again and again, we revisit [this] place.

…As adults, the BEAST feeds on our apprehensions and our weaknesses. Yet, there are some times, we look to it – in penance. Even as it FEEDS on us, so does it protect us – and we return to that place of guilt and sorrow. Asking [it] – what must I do – when I have lost my way.

…

Shi-ne! KURAYAGARE! Kyokugen, saikyou ougi!

"TENCHI HAOU KEN!"

Yuri's voice boomed – driving her right fist like a bullet right into Clark's left eye.

…

A… yes.

A loud thunderclap – nature will not allow chaos to prosper for a moment too long – as two gods met at the same place in order to force back a sense of equilibrium. The back of Clark's right wrist THRUST upwards, meeting Yuri's punch at the exact instant to swat it aside.

The sound of a wet towel swatting a defiant will that would stop the world from revolving, if it did not do so, existence would simply cease to exist. That fist of defiance was hurled far to the sky.

…

The back of Clark's right wrist THRUST upwards, meeting Yuri's punch at the exact instant to swat it aside. Wiping away all the dirt, soil and grime that momentarily clouded his vision – when Clark's right hand pushed itself upwards he glared back at Yuri forcefully from behind his Ray-Ban Wayferer shades, now the snobbish sneer even the momentary sensation of fear and panic was washed away from his face and a more honest, trustful snarl was there to meet her head on.

With a fang toothed gnash he replied silently, smiling, beaming brightly.

There was a reason behind it all after all. For there was one thing EVIL men held in common – that – was that all evil men – were once… All evil men, were once GOOD men too.

That is…

…

That is an ultimate truth.

Chapter 125: the Monster in times of need

…

"What if I told you, I could end all war?" King muttered, whispered sweetly, a sugary scent that could be heard and consumed eagerly by my ears. That perplexing notion was so real and so just to me, that my words were clear and easy to understand. "Will you join me?"

"A!" Clark groaned in the affirmative.

Clark slapped the back of his wrist up, slapping Yuri's punch high and wide, rotating swerving it around in a smooth dance like fireflies in the dark evening. Without a pause in her cadence the beast that enveloped Yuri punched with the same vicious rancor and race left and right, but to reply Clark pushed both arms out – reaching out as far as he could go and even further – deeper. He wrapped his fingers around her knuckles instinctively pushing them easily aside. Even as she retaliated again and again, the warping vortex sucked each blow in only to throw them aside forcefully and cleanly. Deflecting the entire brunt of their force with utter precision.

Clark's left foot dug a deep trench when it plowed to the side, buttressing his stance wide.

The man's open hands – just as he was instructed decades ago – left stretched out and right splayed just by his chin.

"REACH OUT. And, TAKE IT!" The soft spectre of King's voice reminded him.

Even as the RULES again and again and again were rendered meaningless as she cheated fate, Clark pushed them aside.

With a hard right punch an ultimate technique, Yuri threw her right fist like a comet at Clark once again – but it was swatted aside easily. A hard, wet sounding slap, Clark stopped calm and upright hardly even taking the time to look the girl in the eye. As if swatting an insignificant insect, the defense was true and it was absolute. Just as the echoes subsided.

Clark sighed silently – again – the once poison laced fear and apprehension in his face had now returned to a calm deadpan stare out to the void – just as he absolutely did – not - care. Yuri's punch flew wide, missing its mark. When the protected, treasured ultimate attack of Kyokugen Karate floated downwards, Clark's face filled the gaps and with a slight tilt in his head, the furrows in his brows drooped lethargically when her arm wiped away the picture.

{Don't you know…}

He sighed…

{The meaning behind YOUR war is absolutely irrelevant to me…}

T he Ru le of equi valen t ex chan ge

The lines that separate justice have become blurry and indiscriminate now.

ALL I want – is to END it.

A fighting based on HATRED – you've shown your true colours now. And, it's people like you that make it impossible for children to break away from this violent cycle!

Yuri Sakazaki,

Clark Steel.