Guy was trying not to heave another sigh. His irritation was beginning to rouse Rena from her shallow sleep as she clutched onto his chest for support. But simply waiting in this stark hospital corridor frustrated him into anger. He was close to figuring out what happened in Japan and why he hadn’t been able to fight the attacker that night. That sudden incompetence would continue to haunt him unless he had his answer.
He was desperate to get inside the room where the two women lay since their fight, but he couldn’t leave Rena on her own. She was a nervous wreck since witnessing the battle, which made her even clingier than she had been before. But he had to try.
In an effort to escape, Guy placed a bundle of blankets onto the row of chairs, and carefully positioned her body so that she was lying flat. Rena opened her eyes slightly under the stark light, ready to protest, but under his slight touch, she fell back asleep.
Surveying the empty corridors, Guy tiptoed into the small patient room and quietly closed the door behind him. He took a deep breath. A flashback of the great fireball clouded his thought for a moment, then he turned to Sakura lying in her bed. Guy gasped.
Until now he hadn’t noticed Ryu standing against the wall like a shadow. He must have not seen him go in. Ryu looked tired and dehydrated.
“I didn’t realize you were in here,” Guy whispered.
Ryu’s expression remained unchanged. He made no acknowledgement of Guy.
“Are you okay? You looked a little pale at the park.”
Ryu remained silent. He simply stared at the opposite wall, with a vacant forlorn look dragging the lines on his face.
The machines in the room bleeped sporadically. The flow of oxygen from Tawnya’s mask was in constant rhythm. Guy stepped further into the room, anxious to take a closer look at Sakura. He knew he would see little because of the large bandage that completely covered her cheek.
The floor was splattered with dry mud prints. They were from Ryu, no doubt. His karate gi was spattered brown and his feet were completely muddy after running halfway across town in search of Sakura. Tawnya wasn’t what one would call “normal” and Ryu had tried to reach Sakura before harm could be done, but he had been too late.
“Thanks,” came Ryu’s voice in Japanese, almost inaudible. Guy turned sharply toward him, puzzled by this greeting.
“Thanks for what?” he asked, responding with Ryu’s soft tone.
“You were there for Sakura when I couldn’t be,” Ryu said, still staring at the opposite wall.
Guy looked again at Sakura. Now he remembered the tall Japanese girl that disrupted his breakup with Rena in the park. He also recalled talking to her at a tournament. She was far too young to enter, and he wasn’t good enough to compete against Ryu.
“I don’t understand,” Guy said, perplexed, struggling for elucidation.
“You tried to protect Sakura from her, when I didn’t have the power to.”
“I really didn’t do anything,” Guy protested.
“You raced to her aid before the demon trapped her.
“The demon?” Guy repeated, glancing over at Tawnya’s bed with a sense of disjointedness. “Are you talking about the ‘energy’?” he asked, hoping Ryu knew what he meant. “I think it’s uncanny for someone so small to rouse such incredible power.”
Ryu snapped a sharp look at him. Finally, a reaction, Guy thought. Ryu’s eyes were glinting as if he and Guy were thinking the same thing.
“Did you feel it too?” Ryu asked him, eyes widening with the same interest.
“Wouldn’t any martial artist?”
Ryu pushed himself from the wall. His body hung loose for a few seconds before collapsing again. “If you felt it too, then it must be getting stronger.”
“She’s had this sort of power before?” Guy retorted in surprise, unable to keep his eyes off Sakura. The fireball she roused burned in his mind. “But she’s just a girl.”
“That was my previous judgment, until I saw what she was doing with my own eyes...” Ryu trailed off into silence.
The energy ball had a red core at the center, and the sparks were ruby. Only those who had studied the dark arts could summon such an attack. And to have unleashed such power on Sakura? It had taken Ryu years of hard rigid practice to summon those sparks to rouse from his palms. Gouken refused to teach his students to possess such techniques until they were old enough to understand their implications and consequences. Until the age of thirteen, Ryu had known nothing of fireballs, ki energies and aura powers. Even when Gouken decided to share the skills, he was extremely cautious and spoke continuously of the dangers.
Tawnya had handled the fireball without effort; her palm placement had been unnaturally and disconcertingly familiar. It was abnormal.
“A dreaded dark force of nature exists for nothing but to train, fight and destroy,” Ryu recited quietly. “The walking instrument of death has no place in a world that is not constantly torn by war and discord.”
Gouken had once explained to them the meaning of the Dark Hadou, and had expanded on the house cleaner’s story about how Gouki became Akuma. Gouken had lost his brother to a beast, a demon with an insatiable desire for power. Was it absurd to think that Tawnya had any association to him?
“How long has she been like this?” Guy asked in reflection to Sakura, but Ryu didn’t say anything. “RYU?” he snapped, in an effort to break him out of his trance, but then he stopped himself from saying anything in that tone. He had to be calm, and maintain a soft tone. He was close to finding out the truth.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do if that dark energy gets stronger,” Ryu mumbled. “I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself anymore.” He hid his face in his hand. Guy could see the hand tremble.
“Sakura is my responsibility, mine. And look where she is now.”
“How long has she been consumed by these powers, Ryu?”
“I’m not sure. Not long, or else I would have felt it sooner. It doesn’t make a difference.”
“It makes all the difference.” Guy tried not to shout over this detail. “If she’s capable of destroying one small village, then she’s capable of destroying an entire civilization.”
Guy kept his finger pointed at Sakura, breathing in a strained effort to retain his calm, but felt distraught by Ryu’s simplification of the situation.
“You’ve seen her before?” Ryu asked, his eyes sparkling under the dim light of the room.
“Yes. In a rural town past the River Iga in Japan. It was my training village, and I watched someone destroy it with the very same fireball Sakura had summoned.”
Guy watched Ryu grow pale, then saw him slip to the floor. He stepped closer toward him but Ryu kept his hand up to deter him.
He groaned, piecing Guy’s part of the story to his own. The dreaded night when the Dark Hadou fired inside him, it all came back to that night. He had no control of himself, and now Sakura was being blamed for his animalistic show of power.
“It was my fault...” Ryu muttered, rubbing his hand over his face.
“You couldn’t have stopped her.”
“No, I couldn’t stop myself.”
“What are you talking about? Have you been chasing after her, Ryu?” Guy asked, drawing closer to Ryu as his interest grew. He could see Ryu tensing up. They were both sleep-deprived, and shaken from the revelation of the fight of the two women. But as martial artists, their minds raced for two very similar reasons.
“She’s been chasing after me,” Ryu confessed, trying hard to keep his mental image of Tawnya at bay. “For awhile now, she’s been pursuing me, and this dark energy has followed with her.”
Ryu felt a sickening sensation of fear and disgust. If Tawnya didn’t have such an intense hold over him, Ryu knew he could have intercepted her fight with Sakura. He hadn’t been fast enough, nor had he been strong enough. His arms shook and his breath quickened.
“The fight. That was my fault,” Ryu clarified. “How could I hav
e just stood back and watched?” he said with broken breaths. “I’m not much of a man, to let it happen.”
He didn’t feel like a man Gouken would be proud of. He felt choked.
“There was nothing you could have done,” Guy tried to reassure him, but he didn’t sound convincing. He looked around him awkwardly as Ryu shuffled back up in a strange manner.
”I didn’t even have the will to run to her. Instead, I was defeated by the feeling of the dark energy altogether.”
His eyes were now fixed on Tawnya. He felt Akuma close and he had to keep Tawnya secluded, in case the demon within her woke again.
“She’s not who she makes herself out to be,” Ryu said sharply. “I’m convinced she is someone else.”
“That’s insane.”
“She has to be kept isolated, away from everyone,” he said, his voice shaking as he walked to Sakura’s bed. “I need to keep her safe. Away from any harm.”
Realizing what Ryu was about to do, Guy grabbed his arm and pulled him back, but Ryu shrugged him off.
“Nothing is going to happen to them while we’re here,” Guy said encouragingly. “You need some rest. Maybe this whole thing has you delusional.”
Ryu wasn’t listening. He was taking the chance to properly look at Tawnya Blaze. She wasn’t remotely like the woman in the newspaper. Beyond the lacerations, he sensed something profoundly unnerving about her.
He was haunted by Tawnya’s last display at the fight. The wide-legged posture for balance, the arms drawn back, that dangerous look on her face. It was the demeanor of a demon. It was Akuma’s signature stance.
Tawnya was just an actress. She couldn’t have been learning the dark arts from a man who had no compassion or desire to pass on something so sacred, especially to a woman. The mere idea was preposterous.
“I can’t ever believe that Akuma is back like this, through you,” Ryu said, clenching his jaw. He was unable to look at her anymore.
Guy kept himself at the back end of the room, carefully watching. Ryu took Sakura’s limp hand into his.
“I’ve missed you, Sakura,” Ryu said, giving her fingers a tiny squeeze. His mouth twitched upon reflecting on her promise to him.
“I promise,” Sakura had once said, her youthful face expressing a determination that only made her cuter, “to train and fight every day until I become just as good as you.”
Ryu had thought it absurd that a young girl could commit to becoming like him. To imitate a man of experience and vow to be his pupil forever wasn’t a normal dream for a teenage girl, but he knew it was a passing phase, of course. Sakura was now a woman - still very young compared to Ryu, living a successful life that no longer included him. He admired her courage and bold nature, and even felt proud of her accomplishment in her career.
Blood tingled under his skin, feeling light and alive with a clarity that was perfect. Ryu almost wanted to cry, finally sensing what it was like to feel proud of someone. He believed, so vehemently, that he had no family and nothing to be proud about, but all the while, though unconsciously, he had accepted Sakura as his daughter. She had filled a huge void when Ken and Gouken were absent, and it had taken him this long to realize.
His shoulder heaved as he gripped Sakura’s wilting hand. He was completely absorbed in emotion, except for the analytical part of his mind that wondered how she was pulled into all this.
“Ryu? Are you okay?” Guy said, seeing Ryu’s lost expression.
“I’m so sorry I let you down already,” Ryu continued softly, his voice muffled against the blanket.
He paused for a moment as he imagined Gouken and Ken with disappointed faces. Sakura had never experienced a real bloodthirsty fight, and he shouldn’t have put her in that position. Unlike a father, he was unable to protect her. Gouken would have never forgiven him.
“Maybe we should step outside for a bit,” Guy said. He tugged a bit at Ryu’s shoulder, but he was ignored.
“I need you to watch Tawnya for me,” Ryu ordered sternly, blinking his eyes to rid his tears.
“Sure,” Guy hesitated.
“No, I mean, you need to watch over her once she’s out of the hospital.” Ryu’s eyes were suddenly warm as he looked up at Guy. “It’s the only chance I have to bond with Sakura again.”
Guy thought about Ryu’s proposition for a moment, knowing full well that Maki would instantly disagree with keeping a celebrity in the house. If the stories of Tawnya’s schizophrenic nature were true, he didn’t want to play nurse.
Guy sighed, astounded to have forgotten to call Maki about tonight’s sudden change of plans. He had been unable to break his engagement with Rena, but at least he now knew who was partially responsible for the attack on Genryusai’s village. Maki would understand.
“I’ll do it,” he responded softly. Bringing Tawnya back with him would be proof of his involvement. “On one condition.”
“Name it,” Ryu said.
“Tell me everything you know about the village attack in Japan.”
*****
Chapter 18:
KOWLOON