Of Love, Honour, and Revenge Ch. 17
By Matt Lawson

Several hours later, on a 747 bound for Los Angeles, Cammy sat in the first class seats, specially arranged, with General McGruder and Charlie.

Her day off back in Hong Kong had been one of enjoyment, but that didn’t make her feel any better. She understood what Chun Li was going through, having to cover up and lie to protect someone who she cared for. Ryu was not allowed to know about Bison’s resurrection, for fear of his safety. However, Chun Li looked as if she was dying to tell him.

Cammy remembered a line from a Billy Connolly video she once watched. “Women could easily keep secrets, if they wanted to, but they don’t seem to want to.” That was partly true. If you were an untrained, ordinary woman living in a nine-to-five job, then keeping secrets was a hard thing to do, you would say “Don’t tell anyone I told you this….” just to stop the boredom. However, when you are an Interpol detective, or an MI6 agent for that matter, you were trained to keep secrets as much as possible, otherwise you’d end up with something much worse than a lost friendship. So no matter how much Chun Li wanted to warn Ryu, her training, and her work, stopped her from doing so.

The jet took off from the airport on its five-hour long journey to Los Angeles. From there, Guile would pick them up and take them to El Toro.

Her conversation with Guile had informed her that Juli and Juni, two of Bison’s most dangerous assassins, were finally captured. After the fight that had happened in Ken’s home, they woke up in exactly the same way as Cammy, with no memory of their past lives. Since Cammy was the most qualified, after all, she had experienced it herself, she would have to do to them what Chun Li did to her, namely, to try and regain the human part of their lives back. The other major reason was to see if they could state the whereabouts of Bison’s headquarters, but the chances of that happening were minimal.

The plane was due to land in the morning, Los Angeles time. So she promptly fell asleep as the plane took off, to make sure she wasn’t so tired when she interviewed the two girls.

They arrived five and a half hours later, due to the fact that the plane was delayed by air traffic. As soon as they left customs, they were greeted by Colonel Guile, and taken to El Toro.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, where it was still dark, the two original Lords of Shadowloo had managed to make their way into Hong Kong without being stopped for customs. In this city, the stench of Shadowloo’s crime syndicate had found its way into the streets. Even the local Triads could do nothing to stop Bison’s expansion into the Hong Kong sector.

When Shadowloo had started, it had managed to take over an overwhelming proportion of all the drugs that circulated round the city. Before them, the junkies normally took what they needed, and if they couldn’t pay for it, they simply attacked someone for the money, or they didn’t get any. Suddenly, instead of the usual oriental triad members who were pushing the drugs, white and black men started to push them instead. This time, they would force people to take the drugs instead of just waiting for them to pay up before they handed them over. Though they took what was offered, the junkies looked like they wished they would go away. Violence was an expected and understood part of their daily lives. Outsiders were not.

Balrog knew it well, he was one of the first people involved in the takeover of the Hong Kong crime rate, after his expulsion from the ring of boxing.

However, there was so little else to do that Balrog, with permission from his lord Bison, organized a prostitution ring. They were protected by Shadowloo’s own men, plus some of the junkies who were threatened if they didn’t cooperate. Local girls who had gone into a life of drug-taking came for what was supposed to be an English language course and stayed for an infusion of currency, both domestic and foreign. That was where Balrog had met Vega, his future partner-in-crime.

Vega helped to recruit new ‘language students’ for Balrog’s brothels, while Bison’s soldiers found different ways of getting girls to work for them – including kidnapping them. Except for this sideline, Balrog found Hong Kong a bore. It was too soft, too restrictive. As he’d learned from his years of growing up, becoming a world-class boxer, then become a crime lord because of his greed, there was only one rule that mattered to him.

Did some son of a b*tch deserve a bullet to the head? If so, pull the trigger and go home.

If not, what the h*ll where you doing there?

Balrog took a last swallow of the coffee and pushed the heavy mug back along the hotel bedroom’s desk. The coffee was good, black and bitter, the way he always drank it. It made him feel energized, ready to act. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea, here and now, where there was nothing to act against. But he liked the feeling anyway.

He looked at his watch. Where the h*ll is he?

Vega said he would be back in an hour’s time, about 4 o’clock in the morning. How long did it take to make a phone call to Bison, telling him that they had arrived?

The answer was that it took as long as Vega needed it to take.

Balrog fished a graham cracker from an open box and snapped at it impatiently. The taste, the crispness, brought him back to his boxing training back in Las Vegas. He lived on these things there.

As the tall, powerfully built Balrog brushed crumbs from his faded blue jeans, he glanced at the oversized duffel bag lying next to Vega’s bed. He was babysitting Vega’s weapons. A shinken, a razor-sharp ‘live’ blade made in the traditional Japanese way, used in the martial art called Iaido, an Iaito, a type of practice sword made as a stainless-steel replica of the shinken, a small dagger that Vega used as an alternative to his claw, and of course, the very same claw, Vega’s favourite weapon.

During the time Vega tended his bruise to his face, he spent sometime learning Iaido and Kendo, the two Japanese arts of using a sword. Of course, Vega wouldn’t use the swords to kill Chun Li, the person he hated most for ruining his face, but soften her up before he would slice her with his claw.

Tomorrow evening, they would go to the detective’s apartment and assault her and capture the target.

The target, Balrog thought. So ordinary, and yet so vital for the rest of Bison and Akuma’s operation.

The American’s eyes returned to the table. There was a white ceramic bowl sitting beside the ashtray. The bowl was filled with black paste – burned diagrams and notes soaked in tap water, The notes contained everything from where Chun Li lived to the amount of police patrol that went around the area. Ashes could still be deciphered; wet ashes were useless.

Just one more friggin’ day of this,he told himself. The door opened and Vega walked in. He shut the door behind him. He shut it quietly, politely.

Balrog sighed. “How’d it go?”

“It went well. Bison is sending us some men as backup. He can’t afford to fail this operation.”

“Great. We don’t need some stupid *ssh*les with guns, and what does he give us?”

This time, Vega sighed. He didn’t like Balrog. The heavily muscled black man had something he didn’t possess: an attitude. He acted as though everyone were a potential enemy, even his allies.

Balrog took a bottle of still water from the mini-bar and opened it up. He looked up at Vega. “I’d offer you one, but I know you’d refuse. You like it hot. Boiling.”

“Warm beverages are better for you,” Vega replied. “They make you sweat. Cleans the system.”

“As if we don’t sweat enough.” Balrog commented.

“I don’t. And it’s a good sensation. Makes you feel productive. Alive.”

“When you’re with a lady, sweating is great. In here, it’s self punishment.”

“That can be a good feeling, too.”

“To a psychotic, maybe.”

Vega grinned. “And aren’t we all?”

Balrog stayed in the chair, an angry look spread across his face. “I don’t like what you’re saying. A psychotic is irrational. I am not.”

“If you say so.”

“Iy doo.” Balrog said, imitating Vega’s Spanish accent with an edge.

Vega let it go. Unlike Bison, he realized he only needed the man’s skills, not his approval.

Vega opened up the bag and took out the shinken, still in his scabbard. He took a small part of the sword out, showing it’s gleaming surface, as if it had been barely used. Then, he slid it back into the scabbard.

As anxious as the two men were, they both slept. They had to.

Tomorrow evening, the most important part of Akuma’s plan was to come into operation.

Sakura lay on the freezing stone block that passed for a bed. But she wasn’t asleep.

Dan, for some reason, had allowed her to be unchained and not be hanging from the ceiling. Sakura had always been in great pain as she tried to drop her toes to touch the ground. Now, at least that pain was over.

She noticed something in Dan that was different to the usual Shadowloo guards. He seemed a lot nicer to the prisoners than to anyone else. Anyone else that is, apart from Sagat.

Regularly, Dan would take Sagat out to the Bullpen and strap him to the running electricity. Then, as soon as Sagat thought he was going to die, Dan would release him and take him back to his cell.

Sakura was too weak to object to this.

Right now, Sagat was asleep. The last couple of days of torture had drained his body of energy. Sakura felt alone and afraid, like she had done ever since she woke up here.

She began to wonder about Ryu, and wondered whether he would end up like this, because of her.