The Colour Purple Chapter 131: the Promise Made Long Ago, 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]

"Do you know how long it took me to find you? A nightclub? Was this where you've been hiding all this time?" Clark said tersely.

I've been searching for you since 1986.

7 years in between us, and is this what I find?

King turned back and locked her vision down – King slouched forward absolutely defeated, just before the static lines ran across the screen and crumpled the picture on the television screen. Locked her vision down to the sleek, shiny wooden bar in front of her. SCHHHRK… SCHRK! The picture had been changed instantaneously to an ugly 13 year old girl with buzzcut hair, cuts and bruises on her face and body. I've been so lost – I just don't know what to do anymore. "What took you so long?"

…

I… I am SO, so sorry.

SCCHHREEGHHHRRRKK….. a static hum. From an old video cassette from the 90s.

"…even after all I've DONE to you." King's voice cracked, holding back tears valiantly as best she could. WHY? "You still… you still… fight for…" Why do you STILL continue to FIGHT FOR [ME]!?

The camera rotated, focused down to the back of Yuri's head then up Clark's arm, round and round into his eyes – then shifting to the side - the plane of focus started from close on Clark's face to far away into the dark behind the blonde haired man's shoulder.

A dark shadowy silhouette stood behind the man. The man. In the outer darkness, truly set apart from the clutches of time – like gunslingers in an old time movie, Clark's back faced a God he knew so very well behind him, but at this time, there was no reason to turn around.

"King." I know you're there. Clark whispered, not even looking back as he spoke. With a wide beaming snarl – like a MADMAN. "But it's too late, King." Clark curled his arm up. The smile on Clark's face was a reflection of the smile on the Children's face. Masking away all the sorrow of the sacrifices both of them had to endure just so both of them could reach this point in the story, to escape everything that came before them. AND TO MAKE THEIR DREAM REALITY.

DON'T DO IT.

Clark clenched his teeth down hard. A cold and empty feeling, like a slashing paintbrush, coated the horizon in a thick and viscously opaque black where light was devoured by the spaces in between in a split instant as he willed himself again to enter into the outer darkness.

Just like wet paint you had to force yourself not to touch.

Without warning, a sudden sequence of sounds, a rush of quick lightning steps filled his ears to the brim – and in Clark's mind, within the hollow reverberations in an empty bottle, echoed the machine gun beat of footsteps came, came towards him in a violent proclamation – absolutely unafraid, a cadence he memorized by heart, the sound jumped into the darkness to join him.

I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE – SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME.

Where it was devoid of light, Clark grinned devilishly. A small boy behind him, its arms once stitched with catgut tight into its body, stretched up and outwards, pulling the edges of its skin taut, ripping out at the threads that kept his appendages together; it let out a high pitched shriek out loud even though it's mouth was likewise once sewed closed. The second Children would not renege on his promise and his commitment – even if to do so – he had to fight his master and his [G_O_D]. Do I have to fight you again? To REMIND you of our promise?

An erratic lightning fast beat of steps, each distinct, individual tone registering in Clark's mind – but he had been here before, and he knew what was to come next. With Clark's left hand on the back of Yuri's collar dragging her dead body on the ground, it only follows, {With my back turned, a novice right-handed man would simply attack my right side without much thought. But a skilled fighter would attack me from my LEFT shoulder.} Clark thought. Ahh. Granted the luxury of a complex equation of mismatched flow of time within THIS PLACE, he could bob his head up and down, gnashing the tips of his teeth against each other, clicking his tongue in condescending fashion because he knew better.

This sequence of events can only work at a HIGER level of fighting. As it was before – this equation – mathematically solved backwards, reverse engineered from the future 6 steps in advance, reeled slowly back to the present - can only occur from a logical duel of attrition, between two great tacticians. Back and forth, chess moves, like lobbed cannonballs, steps a half dozen in advance flew by back and forth in an instantaneous split second. If I know that simply and logically, that King has to attack my left open side because my hand is tied to Yuri and it will take longer for me to defend, AND if King knows I know… then she will attack my right side. But if I know she knows, that I know… then… She instead has no choice but to…

At the sound of a drop of an invisible coin that hailed a challenger – in our infantile arcade game... Clark twisted his upper torso counterclockwise with his entire strength, just the same as an automobile twisted and turned so hard that its tires were unable to maintain traction on the ground and began to slip, Clark had to commit his entire body to twist – hurling his right hand as far and as fast as it would go across his face and over his left shoulder to defend – TO THE LEFT.

And as you lost control of your facilities when you skidded across the road, wishing you would not die, Clark caught a slight glimpse of a small boy in front of him. A blonde haired Children he knew long and well. However, instead of the maniacal grin Clark was accustomed to, the small boy had a perplexed expression looking at what was unfolding behind Clark.

What. Clark could not understand it at first when the twinkling thoughts rushed by so fast he could not parse it competently. {What are you doing there?} In front of me?

[LA GUILLOTINE.]

The attack impacted like a comet, into his RIGHT.

Clark only saw a white size 10 lace up leather shoe smash into the back RIGHT side of his neck and mercilessly into his face. The force of the hit threw both him and Yuri backwards, away from the edge of the roof.

…and time returned to normal – to the same sequence of events two decades ago.

Clark let go of Yuri, who rolled safely on the ground. Clark, on the other hand absorbed the full brunt of the blow and tumbled sidewards. Painfully, Clark's back slammed into a mess of pipes that earlier leaned neatly on a low standing brick wall. A few feet away Clark's shades skittered on the concrete.

"Aurggh…" Clark groaned, forcing his mind to remain lucid in a desperate attempt to keep himself conscious for a little longer after feeling once again that ATTACK he had not felt for over 10 years now. Even when he had feverishly strengthened his body the past decade – the same nauseous feeling radiated inside his body like a disease that wanted to overcome him. LA GUILLOTINE. Anyone else would have would have probably died after one direct attack. Though even experiencing King's final blow near a dozen times, staying conscious was still an arduous task.

Clark sucked the air feverishly through his teeth to combat the simultaneous burning and numbing sensation at the back of his neck. The Novocain anesthetic killing him slowly. He sucked it in, his saliva slowly tasting sweet as he teetered back and forth between the line that separated sleep and wake, when it was so much easier to give up.

Clark tilted his head up and shuffled slowly rearward, supporting the back of his skull on the shambled mess of pipes. The grown man could barely sit up – saliva dripping from the sides of his mouth, staring out – though all he could see – Clark's face that was, instead of a stark horror, but more of a lethargic, yet conflicting pang – looking out, that within the void, the small specs of floating fairy dust, the listless prisms now glowing with their own energy, making it look like each firefly shaped, randomly floating spec was indeed alive. AT TIMES LIKE THESE, THOUGHTS… An air of MELANCHOLY surrounded the man named Clark Steel, as it always had. When I first saw Marcus. When I first saw King. The answer was so plain and clear after all. Wisps of light that made their world both eerie, yet somewhat mystical.

At times like these, when Clark felt his consciousness slipping away, he tried to hold on just as his bloody fingers gripped feverishly at the end of that precipice. That same sequence of images to try to keep his mind lucid and force himself to continue to feel pain. And thus to stay awake.

{I had two fathers.} One of them refused to save me, and taught me how to stand up, SOLELY, with the strength of my own power. "Kill that nigger, and I promise I will not kill you." Heidern said, his glowing eyes and smile radiated his dark shadowy face from the darkness. "I can't save you... you have to save yourself…"

One of them welcomed me, but insidiously I came to realize that I began to believe that I had to offer my life in exchange for a higher purpose. Clark's thoughts were immediately interrupted when two strong arms wrapped themselves once again 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. Lost in an endless loop of events that were repeating and repeating, in an endless cycle of suffering, yet the Knight continued to hug Clark warmly.

ONE of them is an ANGEL and ONE of them is the DEVIL. And to be intellectually honest, I am not quite certain which one was which.

These scenes looped continuously in Clark's mind in instances like this one.

Presented with two conflicting ultimate truths, I was not certain which one was right. And I began to question, which one was WRONG? ME or the THE WORLD?

The colour began to fade away and bleed out from Clark's neck – turning his body into black and white.

There are times I wished I could give up and just live a meaningless, mediocre life like the rest of these vermin. Even though I know I will see you again.

Chapter 131: the Promise Made Long Ago

RUN HARD. RUN. As if you truly believed that, deep down in your mind and even to the deepest reaches of your soul, you believed that IF you did not reach your ultimate destination in time.

…that the world would instantly END, solely because of YOUR failure.

…as if… you could run. And outpace destiny as it twists the future to its own bidding.

.chol.y - a sudden feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause.

…

3:37 A.M. Approximately 40 minutes ago.

"Hurry. Please, PLEASE HURRY, Robert!" a girl's voice whimpered behind the other side of the telephone. Her voice, once meek and timid was now feverish and raspid. Her sobs had rendered her speech almost indiscernible, and her hands could barely keep the plastic telephone handset up to her face when she trembled. "He… He's going to kill Yuri…"

Likely a strange device, one wired and connected to the wall, where children in 2019 would have no clue how to operate or even begin to fathom what it was originally used for.

You have to save us, only you can save us.

"Please Robert, please…" The electronic voice muttered from the earpiece of the telephone handset that now pendulumed over the edge of a wooden table. There was no one left on the other side in that dark apartment. At the other end of an outstretched uncoiled cable the telephone swung back and forth. There was no one who would answer, even the front door of that apartment that swung open had no words to comfort her in her agony.

The only sound that could even momentarily ease her woes was the uncaged roar of a 3.4-liter V8 engine. Left hand on the steering wheel and right hand on the shifter, Robert threw his lead foot down into the gas pedal until it hit the bottom of its chassis and could penetrate no further. His Ferrari's rear wheels spun in place with a harsh screech before friction took hold and launched his car out into the street with a hard crash, fishtailing chaotically left and right as it leapt forward like a savage animal. Two black skid marks in its wake, the car leapt up the curb into the sidewalk across that way, nearly ramming into a nearby streetlight before it regained control.

Instinctively Robert pulled his hand back and locked the shifter low and to the left into second gear, his left foot actuating the clutch releasing at the same instant his right foot again mercilessly begging his loyal friend to fly. To FLY – and to free us all. I BEG YOU.

"Please, save us…" We are so all alone. Waiting…

Waiting for someone to save us. For both you and for me.

The END of La Bizarre Love Pentagon – part 45.

"Aaaa…" Clark sighed one last time when he was sure he was barely able to regain semblance of composure to stay awake. Clark quickly put his arm up to cover his eyes with his right and felt around for his shades with his left hand. After a few moments the familiar feeling of an old friend welcomed him back to sanity from the tips of his fingers. Clark set his shades on the bridge of his nose, a slight but completing comfort. Clark pushed them up with his middle finger and looked up to his new opponent.

New Hong Kong, Little England, In La Bijoux, this particularly strange twilight lost in time - in August, 4:11 A.M. And even though you would so dearly want to go back, to cold nights talking to an unknown spectre you called a friend; when life was so innocent and so very, very sweet, and the RULES were much simpler and relatively easier to understand... Decisions you made, consequences resulting from your inaction, now rendered irrelevant by the passage of time. That time was wonderful… and horrible at the same time, but, it was over now. A mistake generations of men, many centuries before us committed easily. Though if others did so, it was no less reasonable than it was now. I truly enjoyed our time together BACK THEN. You cannot turn back time – because this is the world we live in now.

…

Run. RUN. RUN!

Run like you've never RUN before, boy. RUN like your life depended on it. RUN. RUN.

Run so hard… so hard, that.

"Hey... HEY ASSHOLE. What are you doing?

RUN HARD. As if you truly believed that, deep down in your mind and even to the deepest reaches of your soul, you believed that if you did not reach your ultimate destination in time.

…that the world would instantly END because of YOU.

…as if… you could run. And outpace destiny as it twists the future to its own bidding.

At the edge of his wits, Robert tore the key from his sports car and vaulted, the same way he imagined it 9 years ago, over the door of his car and began to run.

His right foot slipped when he sprinted through the wet gutter and he found himself face first in that putrid sludge, yet without a thought, Robert heaved himself up with both arms and continued running.

"Fuck. Fuck this." The miasmic traffic would not let up. …and above, it shone, brightly lit billboards plastered up high was the face of an androgynous blonde haired boy. Under it was bold thick font, BENNIMARU. BENNIMARU – the FINAL CONCERT. Now on sale.

In time.

In time, it heals all wounds.

FUCK this, and, FUCK you!

PLEASE, "Let me make it in time," Robert begged. Left and right, Robert put every ounce of strength behind each stride, twisting his arms left and right slashing over his chest. Again and again, "I DO NOT release you from your promise," Over and over. Just as if the concrete and asphalt behind him instantaneously began to crumble and disintegrate underfoot when his heel lifted from the ground. Robert gnashed his teeth as he felt himself trapped in a prison he thought he had left behind 9 long years ago. "Let me make it in time, mister star." If you indeed, in that grassy hill – were true.

Let me be selfish and ask you one last favour. In 1991. Or was it 1992? IT became indiscriminate and blurry.

The door of that apartment building laid open by its hinges as the girl's sobbing voice swing by the edge of that table. She begged.

The Earth and the stars in the sky were connected by that telephone.

I will not release you from your obligation just yet. …and if you fail me – I swear that I will hunt you, and I will haunt you until the end of time.

…

By this time Mousse sat with a weak slouch. She had already been awake for over 20 hours now and it was clear by the silence from the handset, that no one was at the other end of that telephone to hear her pleading for salvation. Mayhaps it was her body pushed to the brink of exhaustion, or likely it was simply her giving up. She no longer had any strength left as she slouched on that small wooden table that served only to prop up the red telephone by the stairwell of La Bijoux.

He won't come, no one will come… and when tomorrow arrives, what will happen to us? Because I was so… I was so afraid to do anything. Mousse sobbed in her hands, the telephone handset swinging like a pendulum in the foreground from its lofty perch.

"Somebody…" Mousse's voice squeaked in hoarse desperation. Anybody!

Mousse wanted to call out, call out to anyone. Eventhough you've fooled yourself all your life, there has to be one moment, one distinct instant, when the concept of pride, the notion of social shame become absolutely irrelevant. Filled with despair there was only one hope, a wish that someone would come and save her. Just like a fairy tale, just like a perfect love story.

When you no longer care about the luxury of how the world perceives you – a woman truly understands what is important. With her voice cracking, and she no longer cared… "ROBERT! WHY WON'T YOU…"

The dark word was silent, and the wind remained still outside, however, the once closed door of La Bijoux clicked. A sharp distinct sound of the door, with its own power, its knob twisted and the heavy wooden door swung open slowly, welcoming in the dank air.

Mousse looked up from her slump to gaze at the open door that now swung freely at its hinges mysteriously solely from the conviction of its own will. Looking outwards into the grayscale twilight world.

"…" Wordless, Mousse breathed out, counting tens of seconds wondering what had just happened.

The door SLAMMED wide open. A dark shadow rushed through like an omen, through the mess of tables and chairs as if it memorized by heart its layout as to avoid crashing into them by accident. Then, a cool breeze rushed by the girl – the sensation of two hands cupped her cheeks while she tried to reel herself from shock she could not understand.

Mousse turned around and upwards up the steps, barely understanding what was happening. Her cheeks puckered in sobs and she bit down on her lip feeling a miasma of sweet and bitter – but there was only thing that is true.

"ROBERT!" She screamed teary eyed. "GO! ROBERT! RUN! RUN!"

"I wish," Yuri pleaded with ALL her might. Because in 1981, we still believed in stars. In courage and bravery – in its TRUE meaning. "I wish, that my brother, Ryosuke… Would smile more."

"A." Robert said tersely and with that rushed up the staircase – to defy the devil – Robert grabbed ahold of the handrails as he swerved his body around the corner rushing up the second set of staircases with the dexterity of a circus trapeze artist – his feet skidding then instantaneously continuing its rushing beat. Like a car turning the corner up the mountain pass Robert went from slide to full speed run upwards up the second and third story staircase.

"Why," Yuri, the baby girl asked. "Why did my mommy have to die?"

The world is going to end. It's the end of the world.

"…and I wish."

The last door on the roof of La Bijoux slammed open, and in front of him Clark hunched back with his left hand. Robert followed Clark's body from the back of his shoulder, down his triceps, elbow and hand onto a lifeless body in his death grip just as he was about to hurl it over to the edge of the rooftop.

Yuri's bloody lifeless body slumped ready to be thrown into the flames of hell.

"I wish... that my big brother, Ryo, and my friend, Robert…" Yuri said finally.

My Friend, Robert…

"That we would be friends forever." For as long as the world turns, may it continue to turn boldly without anyone's permission, offer to us joy, vividly, and – even if we are doomed to remain as slaves - allow us to stay chained to the prison of time. Without our knowing.

…

Tell me, how exactly does an [imaginary being] reproduce? THROUGH BINARY FISSION. Perhaps when TWO ultimate truths collide, reality, now unable to logically parse what is right and what is wrong, subdivides like an asexual organism…

…

I am your ENEMY. Heed my RAGE, and hear me ROAR.

The plain, and simple rules of Kyokugen Karate are very easy to understand, that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. TO gain something of clear worth, one must EXCHANGE something of equal value. It is a simple rule.

If that is your rule. Then come… Come and TAKE IT. Whatever it is you desire, I will OFFER it in EXCHANGE! TO you - our Star.

"Kakkate KOI YA! Hoshi-san YO!" And when Robert crossed the threshold of that final doorway, up the staircase to heaven, when his right foot hit the concrete, the man felt the ripple radiate outward in concentric circles, a tremor when the hard cement instantly dissolved into a dark water. When Robert pushed forward, lifting his head up to his goal – when a man realizes that he must face a dragon that was his enemy. Nothing else really mattered, and even fear and apprehension had lost meaning. Now, Robert found himself uninvited into a foreign dark world where he could not see anything else but HIM.

"You DO know the rules, don't you Robbie?" the monster said with a draped shadow over his face now, but even that pitch black darkness couldn't completely conceal the white glow of his slit eyes and shining, fanged shark toothed grin when he put his lips mercilessly, seductively by my helpless ear. "Hey Robbie…"

JUST fucking TAKE IT!

Then… The star that had fallen from the night sky glimmered defiantly at its last moments, and, and was no more.

"I hear you." Little boy. I will grant your pure wish.

…

"A." What. Clark could not understand it at first when the twinkling thoughts rushed by so fast he could not parse it competently. {What are you doing there?} In front of me?

It seemed so unfair, but that was the world we lived in now. [The promise] seemed to retract unfairly in a way Clark could not comprehend. It has to follow- that put in direct conflict two promises cannot really exist simultaneously. Time froze and Clark felt each vertebrae in his spine froze as liquid concrete flowed in between the spaces and petrified him slowly and surely in place. Up until he could no longer move. The twilight sky up above – when stars slowly sizzled to nothing just when morning threatened to come.

THE HATRED DRIVES MEN TO INSANITY! AN INSANITY, LIKE A THIRST THAT CAN NEVER BE QUENCED UNTIL THE ENTIRE WORLD IS DESTROYED.

As if copy and pasted digitally into place, Robert's body launched up behind Clark's right shoulder, and his kick clicked back with a distinct sound reminiscent of a revolver hammer.

…

Sir Isaac Newton's law states, that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; The law of conservation says that energy cannot be created – it can only be transformed; The law of equivalent exchange decrees, that a wish cannot be granted, unless another of equal value is sacrificed.

In that place that floated in the sky, the battered old man stared intently at a group of three candles separated from the rest on that large table. Two were lit while the third remained in the dark. Without warning the THIRD worn candle suddenly BURST into light and from nothing, now a single wildly flickering flame enveloped its nylon wick on its own.

"Another candle is lit, Master Rugal." Mature said bowing. "It's the third."

"Thank you, Mature." Rugal said. Thank you. He scratched the nape of his black velveteen panther. In heaven. A place that cared nothing for wretched, petty human beings.