Any writing project has bits of fiction that never make it to the final version, but are interesting nonetheless. In between DTs 2 and 3, I invited the net.writer "Victar" to write for DT3. While in the end he had other engagements and never got the chance to write, he did send me one short story about an idea he had for a first-round match in the 3rd tourney.
It's written below. Personally, I like it; while I don't really like my characterization (I'm such a phoney jerk in this :) ) and I wouldn't have allowed the staff/character love subplot in the final version, it's still a fun story.
If anyone is interested in what else Victar has written, he also has a series of five Mortal Kombat stories, and is currently writing chapters of "Ashes of the Phoenix", a Mortal Kombat 3/Tekken 2 crossover. Why not mail him if you're curious.
Janne was unable to find peace.
The excitement and the apprehension were melded within her, and a rigid tension spread across her shoulders and upper back. She closed her eyes and slowly exhaled half a breath. She felt like--not like a coiled spring, ready to unleash its stored potential at the slightest nudge, but rather a spring stretched too taut and held at that tautness for days, until its wire lost its original shape and vitality.
Today was the day before round one of the Third Annual Dream Tourney, and curse her lonely soul if she wasn't... uncertain. Worried. And maybe, just maybe, a little bit...
(Don't say it!) her mind whispered to itself, even as the omnipresent
Videoland Wind whispered across her red-gold hair.
(Don't even think it!)
...afraid.
(No! I am a swordswoman, a warrioress, and I have face down countless battles! I DO NOT KNOW FEAR!)
Janne clung to her past accomplishments in the face of her self-doubt. She had risen from her humble beginnings as a token female of a simple SF-II genre concept to become the cherished symbol of Neo*Geo. Her section of the multiverse had been so successful that it was revised and expanded into a sequel. And in addition to her innumerable struggles with the fifteen other fighters of WH2, she was the veteran of the two previous dream tourneys. She was expreienced, and all the more dangerous for it.
(At least I've got that advantage over so many of the others)), she thought, pursing her lips in a stern line.
...but were her past experiences truly an "advantage"?
The first Dream Tourney had been so long ago that Chun Li, Sonya, and Janne were the only women present at all... Janne had fought her way up to the final round in that one, and then she had faced off the unarmed and unarmored Chun Li for the title of Greatest Fighter of Them All...
...and been trounced.
In the opening round of the Second Annual Dream Tourney, she had been given a rematch against her former Chinese nemesis. Clad in her plate mail, with the whetted blade in her right hand, she had glared darkly against a fragile slip of a creature wearing nothing more than a thin dress, and bearing no armament other than a slender pair of spiked bracelets...
...and been thoroughly trounced.
Vanquished.
Humiliated.
Cowed...
(NO!!!)
Yes.
Janne came dangerously close to weeping; only her years of training and discipline held her emotions in check, and that just barely. God help her, but try as she might she had not ever quite been able to push the misery of defeat from her mind and get on with her life. If anything, the shame had grown with time. Grown, and generalized.
(It's not just Chun Li anymore,) she whispered to herself, bitterly. (I am... afraid.. to fight women. Women of any kind. I am so afraid that I will lose... and I do. Even to that self-styled "judo queen", Ryoko, who thrashes me every day in demo mode.) Janne moved to brush her hair back, stopped, and thought the better of it. No, it would be best if the wind could blow her long tresses across her face, and hide her features from public view.
How she longed for the days when she was the only female fighter she knew of...
(Calm yourself, Janne. Kinsman paired you off with Chun Li in the first round of last year's Dream Tourney; surely he won't do it again. And women, especially female fighters, are still phenomenally outnumbered the entire Video Multiverse by men. The odds are on your side. At least for the first round, you should be slated to fight a man. Any man, no matter who it is, I know that I can defeat, or at least fight with peak efficiency... I know I can...)
"You want know who you fight round one, yes?" gurgled a rubbery, slippery voice from three meters away. Janne whirled, drawing her sword. She hadn't spoken her last few thoughts aloud... had she?
Her addresser bore a dim resemblance in physique to Blanka, but this was clearly someone else. He squatted in the dirt, his hunched back nearly bringing his mottled, hairless face and squinty yellow eyes to touch the earth. His sickly green skin reflected eerily in the makeshift red, blue, and green light of the Video Neutral Zone. But he drooled saliva while wearing a deformed expression that she had never seen upon Blanka's face, and a huge, clicking, clawlike thing was attached to his right hand.
The breeze shifted so that she was downwind. She caught the putrid stench of unwashed clothing, excrement, and blood. Her eyes watered slightly from the sensory assault, and by the time she blinked the moisture away she had forgotten whether or not she knew this... creature.
"What do you want!" she demanded of it. It giggled wordlessly and breathed a roiling cloud of foul purple vapor at her. Janne's reflexes were fast enough that she was able to draw a breath and hold it, sparing herself the worst of the fetid blast, but by the time it cleared she felt just a little too queasy to rush in and hack the horrid thing to shreds.
"Can I have part of your estate?" tittered the man thing. It drew its slimy toungue against its metal claws in a warped parody of a cat grooming its foreleg. "Match-list is posted. Who fights who, first round--all names displayed."
Hope and fear had the combined effect of making her unsteady on her feet. "Where is it?"
"Don't bother. Everyone crowds around it, you read nothing. But I see. I see your name, know who you fight." It flashed a gap-toothed grin in her direction. Its teeth were colored a decaying yellow.
(Have I met this creature before? How does it know my name?) she wondered, but pushed the unvoiced questions back in her mind, in favor of an inquiry that was a thousand times more urgent:
"Who?"
"Spell her name C... H..."
"aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!"
The filthy man-beast's shrieking laughter followed her, as she fled the clearing at a speed that belied her heavy plate armor.
***********************
Kinsman relaxed against her vinyl leather chair, and resisted the urge to put his feet upon the oaken desk before him. He wanted to play this cool, but not too cool. "So," he said evenly to the blonde-haired woman perched on the desk's corner, "is the arrangement agreeable to you?"
"Of course, mon ami," she laughed, tossing her head back. "I do so love the fresh challenge you have put before me! But why ask my permission? I thought the final word as to who battles whom was spoken by vous." As she spoke the last word, she leaned forward and brushed the tip of her index finger underneath his chin.
"It's not a matter of 'permission'," he muttered, sitting up a little bit straighter and surreptitiously batting aside her hand. "It's just that last year there were a few... differences... with the layout and matchups of the first round, and I want to personally discuss some of this year's slated battles with the fighters before they come screaming to my office and kicking the door off its hin--"
"KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINSMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!"
As soon as the horrible wailing had finally ceased, Kinsman removed his hands from his ears and used them to bury his face, instead.
"Could zast posseebly be Janne?" remarked the lady next to him.
"It's either her or the all clear," he growled, just as the door to his office flew off its hinges. Janne retracted her kick and brought her sword against the fallen door. There was a flash of white energy and a vision of flying splinters. Kinsman absently noted that Janne had cleaved it neatly into two pieces a split-second before he realized her sword now hovered about five inches from his throat.
"I... will... NOT... fight... HER!!!" shouted the mad swordswoman. Kinsman's left hand slipped underneath the desk front and jabbed repeatedly against a bright red button located there, out of sight.
"Now, Janne..." he began, soothingly.
"You want I should deespose of her?" crooned the fencer to his right.
"No, that's okay," he said, just a touch more slowly than he was usually wont to speak. "I'm sure that Janne and I can work things out." He was not looking at Janne's face, though, but rather the gleaming, pointed edge of metal she held so precariously close to his person. His right hand, still in sight upon the desktop, suddenly began to drum its fingers in seeming independence to the rest of his body. "Isn't that right, Janne?"
"I don't CARE! Just so long as I don't have to fight her. You can't MAKE me fight her! I won't. I won't! I WON'T!!!"
"Well, if that's the way you feel..." His voice oozed with oily appeasement.
"*&%@ how I feel, that's how it's going to BE!" Janne shoved the point of her sword against Kinsman's throat, and even the repetitive drumming of his fingers ceased. He froze, unmoving save for his left hand, which still continued to press the concealed button. "You can't make me fight her in the first round. Second or third or future rounds, perhaps, if necesscary, but I will KILL YOU if you make me fight her in the FIRST ROUND!"
"Darling," breathed the other woman, "you cannot be comfortable breazhing in that position... are you sure you do not want me to--"
"YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!!!" shrieked Janne without taking her eyes off her prey. "I am NOT going to fight Chun Li in the VERY FIRST, STINKING ROUND!!!"
"What are you talking about, Janne?"
The genuine puzzlement in Kinsman's voice almost caused her to drop her sword. Almost. She was, after all, a trained warrioress. "I thought--"
"You AREN'T fighting Chun Li in the first round. For goodness' sake, Janne, you did that last year. Give me some credit," snorted Kinsman, a certain perturbed self-righteousness coming to his face.
"But--"
"I just had Sergei post the match-ups. Haven't you looked at them?"
Janne mumbled something in French that could have been either an apology or a curse. The female bystander raised one golden eyebrow. Then a flush came to Janne's face and she turned and sprinted out of the room, apparently because she was too embarrassed to stay.
"Hey, WAIT! You totalled my door! You're going to have to either fix it or pay for..." Kinsman let his voice trail off rather than continue addressing the empty air. Well, either Sergei could fix the door, or it could be charged to Wolvie's account under "expenses". Right now, there were more immediate matters at hand to be dealt with. For one thing, where the devil was--
"MARK! Get in here, NOW!!!"
Two shapes materialized where the mad swordswoman had just been-- a young man with brown hair tied in back, carrying an armload of papers, and another with slicked-back hair and black shades.
The first flipped through his papers, seemingly unaware of his recent accidental teleportation, and continued as though making an uninterrupted speech: "...so we might be able to sell the DT rights to Malibu, but retain a measure of creative control if we be sure that the contract contains the abnegation escape clause and determinal pre-ordinate substantial compensation--"
"Mark?" snapped Kinsman, ignoring the spiel. "I want to know why--"
"Wait a minute, Vic," interrupted the Terminator, "why make out a contract with Malibu?"
"At least they aren't Marvel."
"That begs the question. Malibu Comics' reputation has hit an all-time low among Street Fighter fans, and even long before that failed debacle they were commonly identified as 'titles that ship late'."
Kinsman tried again. "Mark, you were supposed to--"
"But they have done some interesting themes and fresh concepts. Have you ever heard of 'Mantra'?"
"Depends. Is issue #1 out yet?"
"Cheap shot," he hissed through his teeth.
"Mark, I activated the alarm and you didn't--"
"There are dozens of comic book publishers, surely. I think we should shop around a little more before we commit our merchandising license to any single one. It's only prudent."
"Don't call me 'Shirley'," he mumbled, sulkily.
"WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP AND PAY ATTENTION TO ME???!!!"
Very, very slowly, the two figures directly in front of him turned their heads in his direction. "Oh, hi, boss," Mark said with a forced laugh. He may have been blinking once or twice beneath those impenetrable shades. "What's up?"
A nice, congenial smile spread across Kinsman's face.
"Mark..."--he paused just long enough to smile a bit wider, in a manner so warm it was chilling--"Security didn't respond when I activated the alarm."
"Alarm?"
"Yes, 'alarm'. As in, 'the little red panic button hidden under my desk.' You know, the one you said could summon help in a nanosecond, thus rendering immaterial my need for live guards. THE ONE YOU INSTALLED. Well?"
The woman with blond hair laughed, a fluting, trilling sound. "I could be a 'live' bodyguard pour vous," she whispered, leaning closer to him.
"Boss," Terminator offered appealingly, "Security didn't detect the activation of any alarm."
"Mark, as little as five minutes ago I HAD A CRAZY FRENCH SWORDSWOMAN BREATHING DOWN MY NECK!!!"
"...and this was undesirable to you...?" Victar speculated, coolly.
"What do you mean by--oh," muttered Kinsman, abruptly standing and drawing away from the blond anime woman hovering next to him. "Look, uh, miss, if you don't mind, these are matters that should be discussed only among the staff."
"Please. Leave us."
"Very well," and with a sweep of her purple cape she was gone.
"Now Mark, I know you did an admirable job of providing security for the last dream tourney, but this time you and your mechanical team were--"
"Disconnected," floated Terminator's voice from below. Kinsman shook his head slightly, and saw that the Chief of Security was underneath the desk, investigating the electronics of the alarm button. "A real class act. Someone has disabled it. It won't be any trouble to fix, but who in the world could have sabotaged it in the first place?"
Kinsman cursed to himself. "I haven't been in this office all the time; it could have been any of approximately one hundred video game characters..."
"...or thousands of people in the audience," interjected Terminator dolefully.
"Or a staff member," added Victar, with a worried look. "The staff more and freer access to the headquarters than everyone else combined." He looked inquiringly at Kinsman. "Sean... um, pardon my asking, please, but what just happened in here that prompted you to call for Security?"
"Oh, nothing. Janne came that close to killing me, is all. Do you have ANY more QUESTIONS?"
"Yeah." He indicated Terminator's half-visible form. "How can he see anything underneath your desk when he's wearing those shades of his?"
************************************
"Oh, my God," Janne whispered to herself, "what a fool I've been." Kinsman would be fully justified if he disqualified her from the tournament immediately. But none of the imposing security robots or AI's had appeared to "escort" her from the premises, so she presumably had been forgiven.
(And for that forgiveness, Kinsman, I owe you. As much as I hate to owe any man anything...) For the first time in the entire day, a resigned calm came to her. (I was a fool to trust that fetid creature. I am not fighting Chun Li; not in the first round, at least. If I am fortunate, I will not have to fight her at all. Reptile removed her from the ranks last year; certainly he or another man will do the same this year...)
She wondered what man she was scheduled to fight. Probably someone not of the World Heroes, which was just as well. For Janne followed the way of the warrioress not just because of its discipline and beautiful grace, but also to find a husband. Ever since her teacher had fallen before her swordpoint, and told her that there was no more she could learn from him, she had set out, on her own, in search of the one man who was her absolute superior in single combat. The one man who could defeat her... and earn her eternal love.
"Alas, for I have not yet met that man," she sighed to herself. In the original WH, none of the seven champions assembled by Professor Tym had been the proper match for her. Even in the sequel, there was no one truly suitable among the new characters.
(Ryoko is female, curse it. Leif is grossly overweight--a prime candidate for coronary disease--and in any case I am uncertain whether or not he is already married. Shura is too driven by his mad thirst for revenge to be interested in love. J. Maxx is an evil beast, and Mudman and I have religious differences.)
As for C. Kidd... well, a nasty rumor that he had married and murdered seven wives persisted, despite his outspoken and angry denials. C. Kidd in fact claimed to have married only twice--once to "that black-tressed sea devil, Belit" and once to "Valeria of the Red Botherhood." Janne had once dared to ask him what had become of his wives [across from the business end of her sword, of course].
"They ran off with another man," he had spat. "Big, brawny guy. Calls himself 'Amra, the Lion'. If he hadn't been made Immortal through the sorcery of Extensive Marketing, I'd kill him. Does that ANSWER your QUESTION?"
It had... but the question as to whether the pirate would make her a worthwhile husband was still up in the air. That left only Dio... an asexual alien who reproduced by means of fission.
(Well, maybe I'll have better luck in the first dream tourney round. I doubt that Kinsman has scheduled me against a fellow World Hero, because he prefers to cross the boundaries between video game miniverses as much as possible. I wonder who it will be? Goldor needs a haircut, but he's pretty cute. Rob Vincent wouldn't be bad, either... Isn't Ken single? Wait, he has a girlfriend... hm, but how committed is he to her? I believe he left her in order to pursue fighting...)
Janne was so deep in her musings that she never noticed the shadow slinking about behind her. Had she turned and looked, closely, she might have glimpsed a ray of light reflected off a polished breastplate... a thin but strong fencer's foil held with dexterous precision in one, guantleted hand... a flash of long blond hair... knee-high boots... and a thick leather miniskirt slit up the side.
"Savor your thoughts while you can, pretty flower," whispered Charlotte. "Because by the time I am done with you, your body, mind, and soul will all be destroyed forever... for Kinsman, I will kill you! Ja Svatte!"
MATCH #XX: JANNE vs. CHARLOTTE
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