The Ring
Kaurik's attack against Shuma-Gorath hadn't worked out well, so he revised his strategy. He set out to look for the weakest-looking fighter he could find, intending to work his way back up to Shuma. Seeing as how Ling Xiaoyu was busily bouncing Sir Dregan off of the ceiling at the moment, he settled on Yuri Sakazaki.
One Cho Upper later, he was in Parasite Eve. Instantly, Kaurik's mitochondria all rebelled at once. When Aya Brea walked into the room Kaurik had landed in, all that was left was his flail, smoking on the floor. This confused her.
As Yuri waved to the cheering crowd, a bit of hail bounced off of her hand. Another hit her on the back of the neck. With a sinking sensation, Yuri turned around to see a frustrated Storm call down a Hailstorm on Duck King.
Duck couldn't dance away in time, and got clobbered. So did Yuri. So, as a matter of fact, did most of the fighters in the ring.
Haohmaru was not one of them.
"--HA! I BID YOU GREETINGS -- KOGETSUZAN! -- AND FAREWELL, MUTANT
SORCERESS, AND HOPE THAT WHEN WE NEXT MEET, YOU HAVE THE COURTESY TO CHALLENGE
ME, THAT IS I, THE LEGENDARY HAOHMARU, WHEN I AM NOT IN THE PROCESS OF LAYING
A LEGENDARY BEATING UPON MY HIGHLY THEORETICAL 'ARCHNEMESIS' GENJURO --"
Storm landed in the Los Angeles of Invasion: the Abductors, where an alien warship tried to steal her off of the street. Later, pieces of that warship were found as far away as San Diego.
"Hey!" Rogue yelled at Haohmaru. "Why don't ya try that on me?!"
"WHY, IT WOULD BE MY PLEASURE, AS A GENTLEMAN AND AN HONORABLE WARRIOR, TO TOSS YOU OUT OF THE RING IN WHICH I HAVE ALREADY PROVEN MYSELF SO LEGENDARILY CAPABLE --"
"Goodnight, sugah."
"-- THANK YOU, ROGUE-CHAN, BUT NOT ONLY AM I NOT TIRED, BUT I AM WELL-RESTED AND ANTICIPATING ANOTHER LEGENDARY VICTORY IN THIS --"
*WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMsmoochTHUD*Haohmaru hit the mat hard, and actually didn't get up for a couple of seconds. Rogue, as she settled down in front of him, didn't notice as her hair turned jet black.
"-- A TRULY LEGENDARY ATTACK! CONGRATULATIONS, ROGUE-CHAN, AS YOU HAVE PROVEN YOURSELF WORTHY OF A SUSTAINED APPLICATION OF MY LEGENDARY SKILL WITH THE BLADE, WHICH WILL, OF COURSE, END WITH YOUR DEFEAT, BUT YOUR SURVIVING HEIRS MAY TELL THEIR DESCENDANTS OF THE DAY THAT THEIR ANCESTOR STROVE WORTHILY TO DEFEAT THE LEGENDARY HAOHMARU, AND THOUGH THE STRUGGLE WAS --"
Rogue took a deep breath. "SHUT UP!"
Haohmaru did. So did everyone else in the RumbleDome.
"HA! YOU MAY BOAST, O 'LEGENDARY' HAOHMARU, OF YOUR SUPPOSED SKILL WITH THE BLADE, BUT AH, THE LEGENDARY ROGUE, OF THE EQUALLY LEGENDARY X-MEN, WILL KICK YOUR 'LEGENDARY' BUTT FROM ONE SIDE OF THIS RING TO THE OTHER, AS AH HAVE DONE TO COUNTLESS OPPONENTS BEFORE, AND WILL DO TO COUNTLESS OPPONENTS LONG AFTER YOU HAVE FALLEN BEFORE MY MIGHTY FISTS --"
Rogue looked horrified, and clapped both hands over her mouth.
"SO YOU SPEAK WITH VOLUME THAT BEFITS A TRUE LEGEND, AND I CANNOT HELP BUT NOTICE THAT, SUDDENLY, YOUR HAIR RESEMBLES MY OWN LEGENDARY MANE! MY LEGENDARY SKILLS OF DEDUCTION LEAD ME TO BELIEVE THAT, PERHAPS, YOU ARE SIMPLY BORROWING A BIT OF MY OWN NOTORIOUS LEGENDRY FOR YOUR OWN USE, IN WHICH CASE, I SHALL CHERISH THIS FIGHT AS I HAVE NONE OTHER, FOR PERHAPS I SHALL FIND A LEGENDARY CHALLENGE BY BATTLING MYSELF! HAVE AT YOU! HA!"
Things started to get really weird.
Stairwell, RumbleDome Hotel
King leapt down the landings, taking the steps five at a time. This didn't go unnoticed by Yamazaki, who greeted her with a Snake Arm on the way down.
When King landed in a heap on the landing between the fourteenth and fifteenth floors, she was at Yamazaki's feet. He had his knife in one hand, pointed at her neck; the other arm was looped around Jan's neck. He'd managed to get Jan off of the chair at some point.
"Don't do anything stupid, Kingy," Yamazaki said through a sneer. "I could break this kid's neck in a heartbeat."
"Okay, Yamazaki," King said, getting up. She held both hands up, palms facing him. "Just don't hurt him."
"He's as safe as you are." Yamazaki tightened his hold on Jan. "Now, let's talk money. Just how much is this kid worth to you?"
"Everything."
"I do like the sound of that." Yamazaki made a "come on" gesture with the tip of the knife. "Come on. Cash, jewelry, valuables, whatever you got. On the floor--"
Jan sank his teeth into Yamazaki's arm.
With a roar of pain, Yamazaki tossed Jan across the landing. The boy's head struck the wall with a dull crack, and Jan crumpled to the floor.
"JAN!" King yelled.
Yamazaki just grinned. "Oops."
King tore into him.
The Ring
Captain America, although he was busy with Ling Xiaoyu, watched Rogue and Haohmaru out of the corner of his eye. Mostly, it was because the two of them were hard to ignore, but he noted that Haohmaru was actually winning. He looked at Rogue, noticed that she kept trying to parry Haohmaru's sword instead of just punching his lights out, and put two and two together.
The next time Xiaoyu performed one of her overhead flips, Cap ran underneath her and at Sir Dregan. By the time the zombie knight realized something was happening, Cap had already yanked his sword out of his hand and shoulder-blocked him out of the ring. Dregan landed in Resident Evil 2, where, to Leon Kennedy, he was just a zombie in a funny suit.
Cap picked up Dregan's broadsword. "Rogue!"
"-- I FEEL IT ONLY JUST TO INFORM YOU, SUGAH, THAT AH HAVE PARTICIPATED IN THE SAVING OF THE WORLD NO LESS THAN THIRTY-SEVEN TIMES IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS, INCLUDING THE LEGENDARY OCCASION ON WHICH AH, ACCOMPANIED BY THE LEGENDARY WOLVERINE, TRAVELED TO A DISTANT DIMENSION AND FACED OFF AGAINST AN ALIEN RACE THAT INTENDED TO USE THE PEOPLE OF EARTH AS CATTLE --"
"ROGUE!"
"-- AND WHILE I RESPECT THOSE WHO HAVE EVEN A FRAGMENT OF MY OWN LEGENDARY NATURE, EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE APPARENTLY STOLEN IT OUTRIGHT, IT IS A WELL-KNOWN BIT OF FOLK WISDOM THAT AN IMITATION IS NEVER AS GREAT AS THE ORIGINAL, THE ORIGINAL IN THIS CASE BEING MYSELF, THE LEGENDARY HAOHMARU, MASTER OF THE BLADE AND DESTROYER OF EVIL, AND SO YOU MAY BE SURPRISED WHEN MY LEGEND PROVES TO BE BIGGER --"
"ROGUE!"
"-- AND LEAVING ASIDE THE TALES OF MY OWN LEGENDARY FEATS, AH FEEL AH MUST INFORM YOU OF ANOTHER WIDELY-HELD OPINION COMMON IN MY TIME, THAT IT IS NOT THE SIZE OF YOUR LEGEND THAT COUNTS, BUT HOW YOU USE IT, AND THEREFORE -- OH... YEAH, CAP?" Cap threw the sword to Rogue, who snatched it out of the air. "HA! NOW WE ARE BOTH ARMED, HAOHMARU, AND PERHAPS NOW AH SHALL TRULY BEGIN TO LAY A WHUPPIN' UPON YOU! TAKE THIS! AND THIS! AND THIS!" She tossed a Senpuuretsuzan at Haohmaru.
"HA! WHILE YOUR SKILL IS UNQUESTIONABLE (BECAUSE, AFTER ALL, IT DOES APPEAR TO BE MY SKILL), I, THE LEGENDARY HAOHMARU, WILL STILL PROVE TRIUMPHANT IN THE END --"
"I'm going to regret doing that," Cap muttered to himself.
Meanwhile, across the ring, a freshly conscious Benimaru Nikkaido brushed ice off of his clothes. Behind him, a pile of hailstones shifted, and Genjuro slowly rose to his feet.
As he got up, Genjuro noted two things: one, an unconscious Yuri Sakazaki lay next to him, and two, there was a small orange gem on the mat next to her. With a shrug, Genjuro picked the gem up and pocketed it before looking up.
His eyes immediately settled on Haohmaru.
"YOU! I don't know how you did that most unlegendary of legends but when I find you I'll be sure to ask you right before I dig my sword into your chest and start working it back and forth to saw out all your vital organs one by one and remove them from your chest and dry them out and get some glue and some macaroni and have a fun arts and crafts party but first your friend here has to get out of my way so goodbye you goofy-haired loser --"
Genjuro grabbed Benimaru, tossed him over his shoulder, and dashed headlong towards Haohmaru. Benimaru fell out of the ring and landed in Parappa the Rapper, where Master Onion taught him that both kicking and punching are all in the mind.
Sub-Basements, RumbleDome Hotel
There had been a lot of commotion earlier, complete with gunfire, explosions, screaming, and the like. Anubis, secure inside a locked storeroom, more or less ignored it. He sort of liked the sub-basements; it was nice and quiet, once the fighting had died down.
Naturally, the silence was then shattered by the sound of a chainsaw cutting the door to his storeroom open.
"-- doesn't get any easier to watch, you know."
"I don't have a *choice* here, Mae. It just sort of comes when I need it."
"You could at least warn us --"
"Who are you," Anubis said, "and what do you want?"
The three people who'd entered his storeroom stopped talking amongst themselves and peered into the room, trying to find him. The one with the chainsaw looked away from it for a moment, and it vanished.
Finally, one of the taller ones spoke up. "Um... hey. My name's Ran... Ran..." He spat. "Okay, you say it."
"His name is Rancid, sir, and we are his boon companions. I am Lord Wulf of Camelot, and this is Matrix. We wish to speak to you on a matter of dire importance concerning a substance known to you as the Ore."
"Yes, I'm familiar with the Ore," Anubis said bitterly. "Heavy, glows green, curses people with strange powers and immortality?"
"That's it," the tall one -- Rancid -- said. "I accidentally got some of it, and now I'm like this."
Anubis squinted at Rancid. "I see..."
"We've been looking for War Gods for the last couple of hours," Matrix interjected. "We sorta had to chop up a few of them, and the others we've found so far have all been either beaten unconscious or almost impossible to talk to. You're the last one."
"It figures." Anubis sighed. "So you want to know what this is all about?"
"Yeah, I would."
"Sit down. This could take a while."
Room 1718, RumbleDome Hotel
The only real loser was Heihachi's suite.
A Chaos Flare hit the curtains and set them alight, which instantly triggered the sprinkler system. Demitri chanced a teleport, which set him down too close to Heihachi, and received a powerbomb through a solid oak bureau as a result; only luck kept Demitri from getting a stray chunk of wood through his heart. He returned the favor by piledriving Heihachi headfirst through a coffee table. Demitri attempted to land a Midnight Bliss, if for no other reason than to see what Heihachi would look like as a girl, but Heihachi grabbed the mattress off of the bed and slapped him out of the move with it.
Demitri chanced a look through the doors of the bedroom, and noted that his "allies", the World Heroes, were as staggeringly inept as they'd been advertised to be. Jin Kazama and Kuma, between them, had reduced most of them to battered heaps on the floor.
"I do believe I've had enough of this, old man," Demitri said calmly.
"Not nearly," Heihachi snarled. He dropped the mattress, and wrenched a jagged shard of wood from the wreckage of the bureau. "Not until you're dead."
Demitri yawned mockingly, and Heihachi cautiously rushed him, holding the stake parallel to the ground. Calmly, Heihachi ducked, blocked, and parried every blow Demitri threw, waiting for an opening.
Eventually, he got one, and drove the stake home... as Demitri reached up with supernatural speed and caught his wrist. Demitri wrenched the stake out of Heihachi's grasp, broke it in half, and grabbed Heihachi's neck with his other hand.
"You are still little better than a pawn, Mishima," Demitri said, "a pawn pretending to be a king." His fangs came out. "Should I remind you of that?"
Heihachi struggled, but couldn't break Demitri's grip. "You had best kill me first, Maximov..."
"I do enjoy it when that's said to me," Demitri said quietly. He tightened his pressure on Heihachi's neck.
"Put him down, monster."
Demitri turned to smile at Jin Kazama. "What if I don't, boy?"
"Then I'll make you put him down."
Kuma growled, as if to add emphasis to Jin's words.
Abruptly, Demitri was gone, and Heihachi fell to the bedroom floor. He left behind a cloud of rapidly vanishing smoke, as well as mocking laughter.
The Ring
"-- THEREFORE, I FEEL THAT THE RECENT LEGISLATION TO MAKE LEGENDARY VOLUME A VIOLATION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION IS UNJUST AND WOULD ONLY SERVE TO RESTRICT LEGENDS SUCH AS MYSELF, FOR WHEN ONE OUTLAWS LEGENDARY VOLUME, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE LEGENDARY VOLUME, AND EVEN THOUGH I, THE LEGENDARY HAOHMARU, WOULD MAKE QUITE THE DASHING OUTLAW --"
"-- AND SO, AH FEEL IT IS ONLY JUST TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU SHALL PAY FOR YOUR ELIMINATION OF MY FRIEND STORM, AND AS SUCH, YOU WILL BE DEFEATED HERE in the very ring... you call...?" Rogue's hair reverted to normal. "Oh, thank goodness..."
"-- get out of my way you skunk-haired loser because I have many things to discuss with Haohmaru and all of them have to do with me stabbing him over and over until he dies and then I plan to tell him at great and tiresome length exactly what I intend to do with his unlegendary corpse --"
"You two deserve each other." Rogue dropped Dregan's sword and took a step backward, letting Genjuro attack Haohmaru. Both of them immediately started screaming at each other, punctuating it with their swords clashing together.
"Excuse me?" someone said to Rogue.
"Yeah?"
"My name's Ling Xiaoyu, ma'am, and I don't have an opponent right now, so if you wouldn't mind?"
Rogue blinked. "Ah'm not sure that'd be such a great idea, kiddo."
"Aw, come on. Just for a while, until someone else is free?"
"...Ah'm never gonna get used to this. All right, go ahead."
Xiaoyu bowed politely, took a step backward, and hit Rogue with a standing palm strike. Rogue, unaffected, reached over to Xiaoyu and tapped her lightly on the forehead. Xiaoyu went flying halfway across the ring, over the edge, and through the dimensional field.
She landed in a snowdrift in South Park, right in front of four intensely foul-mouthed boys. If she hadn't been unconscious, she would've been forced to kill Kenny.
Rogue turned to the audience. "Well, Ah did warn her."
The audience, unmoved, booed her anyway.
Stairwell, RumbleDome Hotel
Yamazaki wasn't a brilliant man, but he knew when to cut his losses and run. After fifteen minutes of getting kicked around the stairwell like a hacky-sack, he decided the time had come.
He staggered to his feet, pulled out his knife, and threw it. King easily got out of the way, but she wasn't Yamazaki's target.
Jan was.
King slowly turned, hearing Jan cry out, to see the knife sticking out of Jan's side.
"That's not a fatal wound. You treat it right, it won't even scar," Yamazaki said through clenched teeth, "but it'll kill him, just the same, if you don't get him help right now."
"You're a dead man."
"Only if you let him die so you can kill me, Kingy..." Yamazaki managed a leer. "Careful. That looks like it might be deep."
King hesitated, like she wanted to say or do something more, but there was only one real choice. She picked up Jan as carefully as she could, and kicked open the door to the fourteenth floor. Before Yamazaki realized it, he was alone in the stairwell.
He'd had closer calls, Yamazaki reasoned to himself, and even those had been for lesser stakes. He spat blood onto the floor, and reached into his pocket. Besides, he could get a lot more money for what King'd dropped than what King'd had.
Ryuji looked at the Soul Gem for a moment, put it back in his pocket, and started to limp towards the basement.
Sub-Basement, RumbleDome Hotel
Demons had a particular scent, but it wasn't obvious; even if one smelt it on a daily basis, it was easy to miss. It'd been faint since the moment Taki arrived in this strange world, and at first, she'd thought it was any of a dozen other strange smells. It'd only been when she'd seen Blackheart's brief appearance in the ring that she'd realized what it was.
They were clustered together in one of the storerooms. There were maybe a dozen of them, attended by a blank-eyed blonde woman and what looked like a minor succubus. Some of them were obviously powerful. Taki watched their council from one of the ventilation shafts.
"...we have no choice, obviously," one of them was saying, in a deep half-telepathic rumble. He had black skin and no mouth; a forest of spikes grew where a man would have had hair. His tail twitched as he spoke. "Maximov must be found and slain, despite the odds."
"That won't be easy," another demon replied. This one was either purple-skinned or clad in purple. "If he decides he doesn't want to be found, he usually won't be. He's good at it."
"FoOlS," a third demon interjected. This one spoke from deep shadow. All that was visible of it was a twisted red arm, which popped occasionally, either by itself or as bones snapped back into place inside it. It made a fist with obvious difficulty, and pounded on the floor to illustrate its point. "WhIlE yOu PrAtTlE oN, MaXiMoV pLoTs. We MuSt AcT nOw!"
"Do be quiet, Asmodeus," the purple demon said in a bored voice. "Ever since we scraped you off of the floor, you've been insufferable."
"I SeEm To ReMeMeBeR a CeRtAiN mOrTaL fEeDiNg YoU yOuR lIvEr A mOmEnT aGo, jEdAh," Asmodeus retorted.
"Excuse me," the black demon said smoothly. "Our alliance is off to a rocky start, yes, but there's no reason to fight amongst ourselves. It is simple; we find Maximov. We kill him. If we run into McWild, or perhaps the former champion, we snatch them up while we're at it. Is there any objection?"
No one spoke. "Very well, then. Silence gives consent. Let's go."
As they left to search for Demitri, none of them noticed the ventilation shaft's cover open, or that they were followed.
The Ring
Duck King confronted Yoshimitsu. "Okay, robot, let's see if you can handle the Duck King!"
Yoshimitsu watched Duck move for a couple of seconds. Then, calmly, he retracted his laser sword, and began to mirror Duck's stance.
"What'chu doin', robot?" Duck was confused.
"I'm a dancin' fool!" Yoshimitsu flopped to the mat and started doing the Worm. The audience, which had already established that it was firmly in Yoshimitsu's pocket, stood and cheered.
"Oh, no, you cannot do that! I am the *master*!" Duck took a few steps backward, ditched his jacket, and started breakdancing. After two pommel vaults on the mat, he flipped over, braced himself on his head and hands, and started to spin around. A couple of minutes later, he spun up and to his feet. "Beat that!"
"I gots the skillz, man!" Yoshimitsu walked around in a circle, then bent at the knees and started flailing out his right arm and right leg, then his left arm and left leg, and jumped into a backwards handspring. As he touched down onto the mat, he did the splits, hopped back up, and spun around in place. As he spun, he sat down, vanished, and appeared on the other side of Duck, still sitting Indian style on the mat. The audience, which had been fairly quiet during Duck's dance, burst into renewed applause.
Duck, standing with his arms folded, frowned. He walked forward, rolled up his sleeves, and started making "come on" gestures to the audience. Obligingly, they cheered, and Duck immediately jumped up and touched his toes against both outstretched palms. He did it twice more, then kept that position as he landed on the mat. Rolling backward, Duck went up into a handstand, turned it into a one-armed handstand, changed arms twice, and started to hop up and down on the one arm, until he'd completed a full circle. He let himself drop, rolled up to his feet, and bowed to the audience.
The audience may have applauded, but Haohmaru and Genjuro's constant arguing drowned them out. Duck, annoyed, started shouting at them, and they started shouting back.
Yoshimitsu stood up, shook his head, and booted Duck out of the ring while his back was still turned. Then he turned and moonwalked away.
Duck wound up among the dancers in Dee Jay's stage. He fit right in.
Room 1657, RumbleDome Hotel
Doom sat in his chair, his arms folded, and regarded Magneto dispassionately. "I appreciate you accepting my invitation, Magnus."
"What do you want, Doom?" Magneto demanded.
"An alliance." Doom straightened in his chair. "I find myself in need of powerful allies, to combat certain forces present at this competition. You will suit me."
Magneto poured himself a glass of wine. "Continue."
Doom smiled behind his mask. "If you agree to work with me, you shall have done a favor for Victor von Doom. I am an excellent ally... and a relentless enemy, as you know."
Magneto considered this for a moment. "I wouldn't even consider that if it came from anyone else. What kind of 'forces' are you talking about?"
Doom immediately turned to his computer console and pressed a button. "Among others... them." His monitors showed an assemblage of demons walking down a corridor, somewhere in the hotel.
"Is that Blackheart?" Magneto asked, coming up behind Doom.
"It is. I have always been inclined to foil the plans of demons whenever I encounter them... but one has slain a man who once saved the life of Doom. I intend to avenge him."
"You don't feel confident enough to oppose them by yourself?"
Doom turned to look at Magneto. "If they were my only concern, we would not be having this conversation -- hm." His monitor now showed Taki, slowly making her way after the demons. "Interesting."
"Very well, Doom." Magneto sipped at his wine. "I have to enter this foolish competition shortly. If your favor's urgent, it either needs to happen right now, or I can't help you."
"If you find this tournament foolish, Magnus, why are you here?"
"It suits my purposes." Magneto looked at Doom over the edge of his glass. "Why are you here, then?"
"It suits my purposes as well." Doom held out a transceiver. "This is made of plastics and ceramics. If I have need of you, I shall call you on this, and I expect you to respond. Once these creatures have been dealt with, you may consider me in your debt."
Magneto smiled faintly. "Noted. Farewell, Doom." He let himself out of the room.
Doom, now alone, turned his attention to Taki. He was soon deep in thought.
The Ring
Chang Koehan was at ringside. The awesomely fat Korean, who Shuma-Gorath had thought looked delicious a few minutes ago, had entered the RumbleDome quietly, apparently after robbing one of the hotel restaurants. He had carried a small charcoal grill to ringside, lit it, left, and returned shortly with, among various other things, a marinade pan and a few skewers. His iron ball rode on his back.
Every time Shuma-Gorath looked at Chang, Chang licked his lips, rubbed his belly, and pointed a skewer at Shuma.
Shuma-Gorath consumed. That was what it did. The idea of being consumed itself, which seemed ridiculously likely, scared it. Then, the fact that it was scared, scared it all over again.
All of this is really a shorter way to explain why Shuma-Gorath attacked Terry Bogard: it was distracted. Anyone (anything) who had (which had) been paying attention would've noticed that Terry and Blue Mary were watching each other's back, and attacking one of them usually meant having to fight both of them at the same time. This was especially obvious after what had happened to Akira Yuki not even a minute earlier.
(That, incidentally, was, in order: a Burn Knuckle to the face, a Straight Slicer sliding kick to the knees, a grab leading to a slam against the mat, a gentle tomo-nage throw over the forcefield, and a sudden, unplanned trip to The Simpsons, where Akira was assumed to have some horrible birth defect and was treated very nicely by all involved. Marge made brownies. Akira was confused.)
Shuma-Gorath didn't do anywhere near as badly, but then again, it had eight tentacles. It was more than able to handle both Terry and Mary at the same time.
Unable to help itself, it checked on Chang Koehan again, just to make sure he hadn't gotten over the forcefields somehow. The moment it was distracted, Mary jammed her taser directly into its eyeball.
Shuma shrieked telepathically, blinded both literally and by the pain. As it withdrew its tentacles, Terry Bogard smoothly stepped around it, got his balance, and rained a flurry of punches onto its body, driving it slowly backward. Once it was against the forcefield, he got a handful of tentacle, stepped back, and tossed an uppercut which knocked Shuma-Gorath out of the ring.
"You all right, Bogard?" Mary asked, breathing hard.
"I wish that was the weirdest thing I've ever done," Terry said with a faint grin. "I mean, last year --" He stopped to stare at Chang.
The moment Terry had gotten anywhere near the edge of the ring with Shuma, Chang had picked up his cooking supplies in both arms and ran around the ring to wait. As Shuma fell through the dimensional field, Chang jumped in after him.
Chang's timing was perfect, and both of them wound up in Monster Rancher, in the center of the arena. The feuding monsters took one look at Shuma, another look at Chang's grill, and fled.
Room 647, RumbleDome Hotel
Kim Kapwhan had no idea what to think about that.
He didn't stop smiling, though.
The Ring
"That may be the weirdest thing I've ever seen..." Terry concluded. Mary nodded.
Annie Hamilton, at that moment, agreed. Through some kind of weird luck, she'd managed to stay in the ring for a good ten minutes, and had actually began to accumulate a small cheering section. Right now, she was cautiously edging towards Ken Masters and Ryo Sakazaki.
Last year, she'd had a front-row seat to the Rumble, and had later managed to get ahold of the videotapes. She was almost positive that the "official" version of events wasn't what actually happened, and was hoping to get a moment to talk to Ryo about it.
Ryo wasn't really in the mood for talking just then. He felt more like bleeding, or maybe lapsing into a week-long coma. Ken Masters had either been holding back or warming up earlier, and now, was loudly proclaiming how he was the "superior original model" as he kicked Ryo's ass from one side of the ring to the other. It wasn't a totally one-sided fight, granted, but Ryo was in a bad way.
As Ken ran up to him and launched a flying kick, Ryo rolled away from it, got up on his feet, and staggered briefly. He and Ken had switched positions, which now put a suddenly wary Annie Hamilton behind Ken.
Ryo saw Annie, but he also saw something that looked like a six-foot-tall bumblebee that was suddenly all over Ken, attempting to run him through with its stinger.
As a matter of fact, not even Q-Bee was quite sure what the hell she was doing. She had been glad to see Jedah in pain (such as it was for him) earlier, but while she'd been in the ring, she'd absorbed horrifying amounts of punishment from, in turn, the departed Benimaru, Yoshimitsu, Captain America, and Genjuro. If not for Ken, she reasoned, she could at least have been using Jedah as a shield, and therefore, Ken had to die.
(It is worth mentioning at this point that the aforementioned punishment included, among other things, Yoshimitsu Tornado Dropping Q-Bee on her head.)
Ken was more surprised than anything else, and as Q-Bee flailed at him with her stinger, he started to get angry. When she hit him with a swarm of bees out of nowhere, he got righteously pissed. He began to set Q-Bee up for the Shinryuken, intending to knock her into the nosebleed seats.
Ryo, at this point, mentally shrugged and Haohshokohkened both of them. Q-Bee absorbed the brunt of it and flew forward into Ken, who rolled with it and let Q-Bee fly over him; despite her wings, Q-Bee went straight out of the ring and onto the hood of a powerboat in Hydro Thunder. This didn't improve her mood.
As Ken rolled, though, he went straight into Annie Hamilton, who lost her balance. Both Annie and Ken went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Stands, RumbleDome
"What's Daddy doing, Mommy?"
Eliza Masters turned bright red. "Getting in a lot of trouble."
The Ring
"Hey, lady, get the hell off of me!" Ken shouted.
"Look, I don't want any --" Annie started to say. Then she looked down. Both of Ken's hands were exactly where they didn't belong. "You stupid git!"
Ken looked at his hands, at Annie, up at Eliza in the stands, and hurriedly got to his feet. "Um... um... sorry?"
"I'll give you sorry!" A bird made of fire hit Ken in the face, and Annie followed it in. "I'll give you all the 'sorry' you can handle, you arrogant..."
"Shoryuken!"
To Eliza's satisfaction, the Dragon Punch knocked Annie out of the ring. Annie landed in Vigilante 8, in the back seat of a car.
"Were you looking for trouble, baby?" John Torque said, leaning over the seat (and being awesomely cool). "If you want it, I think you found it." A barrage of machine-gun fire hemstitched the windshield.
"Oh, bloody marvelous." Annie huddled down low and covered her ears.
Back in the ring, Ken clapped his hands together. "All right, Sakazaki. Let's finish this."
Slowly, Ryo took in a breath, let it out, and clenched his fists. "Ready when you are."
*****YOSHIMITSU (T3) 42:17 [ratio=2.47]
TERRY BOGARD (KOF96) 41:17 [ratio=2.41]
KEN MASTERS (SF3:2I) 38:21 [ratio=1.81]
BLUE MARY (RBFFS) 39:20 [ratio=1.95]
HAOHMARU (SS4) 38:20 [ratio=1.90]
CAPTAIN AMERICA (MSH) 40:25 [ratio=1.60]
GENJURO (SS4) 35:23 [ratio=1.52]
ROGUE (XM) 35:25 [ratio=1.40]
YURI SAKAZAKI (KOF96) 32:29 [ratio=1.10]
RYO SAKAZAKI (KOF96) 30:29 [ratio=1.03]
-------- LINE O' ELIMINATION ™ -----------
ANNIE HAMILTON (PI) 29:29 [ratio=1.00]
SHUMA-GORATH (MSH) 27:31 [ratio=0.87]
Q-BEE (DS3) 26:32 [ratio=0.81]
STORM (XM) 25:33 [ratio=0.76]
DUCK KING (RBFFS) 23:35 [ratio=0.66]
LING XIAOYU (T3) 20:38 [ratio=0.53]
BENIMARU NIKKAIDO (KOF96) 20:38 [ratio=0.53]
SIR DREGAN (M:tDA) 15:43 [ratio=0.35]
AKIRA YUKI (VF3) 14:44 [ratio=0.32]
KAURIK (I&B) 9:49 [ratio=0.18]
Evil Bastard Match:
DEMITRI MAXIMOV (DS3) defeats HEIHACHI (T3), 31 to 21, with 4 abstentions.
Footrace Match:
KING (KOF96) outruns RYUJI YAMAZAKI (RBFFS), 37 to 16, with 3 abstentions.
ELIMINATIONS: Yoshi, Terry, Ken, Mary, Haohmaru, Cap, Genjuro, Rogue,
Yuri, Ryo: 1.
CURRENT ELIMINATIONS LEADERS: Captain America 10 (!), King 7, Ryu 6,
Chun Li 5, Heavy D! 5, Rogue 4.
CURRENT ELIMINATIONS LEADERS (LIFETIME, ALL UVRs): Haohmaru 36, Guy 21,
Chun Li 18, Ryu 14, King 13, Morrigan 12.
GAMBLERS' AWARD: Annie Hamilton got 15 "live" votes from people
who've never so much as heard of Power Instinct. It nearly paid off, too. (Incidentally,
thanks to KCG for writing a moveslist for her.)
FOR THE SEAFOOD LOVER IN YOU: 23 voters requested that Chang, despite
my error in the draw, eat Shuma-Gorath anyway.
REPRESENTING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: "2. CAPTAIN AMERICA (MSH)
Live. (I'm sorry, I just gotta!) ((This
from the guy who, on July 4th, beat
Marvel Super Heroes with Cap, and put USA as his initials!^_^))"
REPRESENTING THE REST OF THE COMPUTERIZED WORLD: "2. CAPTAIN AMERICA
(MSH) Well, since Captain America is representative of the Land of the Imperialist
Pigdog Consumer-Driven Star-Spangled Shotoworshippers, "Die" seems
like the way to go here. :)"
VOTE QUOTES:
"'Heihachi circled his opponent warily. Demitri, confident as he was, wasn't stupid and rushing in. Stalemate. A loud CRACK drew their attention to the fourth wall, where a big, fat scottish guy was holding a sledgehammer. "'Oh, no!' the two villains cried. 'It's FAT BASTARD!'"
"HEIHACHI (T3) - LIVE, WIN, STUFF DEMITRI'S CHEAPO ARSE IN GUNNYSACK AND BEAT HIM WITH A ROCK - or, ya know, whatever works...."
"94. BENIMARU NIKKAIDO (KOF96) Die. Sexual preference is irrelevant. Dumb-ass 80's hairstyling isn't."
Duck and Yoshi's "dance-off" competition was directly inspired by a bunch of guys doing the same thing at a rave called Plur, in Omaha, on November 13th, 1999. Credit where credit's due, an' all.