The enormous shape of Apocalypse stands before Gambit, the wind of the facility was gushing with wind, he was alone, there weren’t any other X Men here right now, and his charged throwing cards were having a negligible effect on the think new massive armored form of Apocalypse, who was always already insanely over-powered.

“Do you really think this is why I lured you here? Just to fight… you?”

Gambit was listening. He was ready to fight, and to go out heroically, and he was ready to die, finally, at least he’d be standing on his feet. But he wanted to know why this new and improved form of Apocalypse had lured him all the way here.

“I have been engaged… in an ultimate battle… between dimensions I was previously unaware of, but one in particular, and the winner of the struggle will be the form… of the Destroyer… and it looks like I will not be the one… but my enemy, Piedmon, from a Universe described only as Digital in nature, has produced a Destroyer Avatar which far surpasses my power.”

Gambit was shocked. He had never seen a vulnerable spot in Apocalypse before! And he was scared at what kind of power had humbled the old Tyrant, even in his future-advanced form, which makes him massive and more formidable than Gambit had ever seen him.

“Well, what you want done?”

“I need you… to find… a secretive organization—as secretive as the X Men… the agents are called… Agents of the Janus Nexus.

…

The Old Man and his apprentice had been on the case, trailing a lead which lead to the cult that they had pegged their suspicion on, in New York City, at a building that, for lack of any better words, was either built by a madman, or a genius… or both. It was a natural supernatural conduit. If that makes any sense.

John Constantine was on the scene too. They were on the trail of Gozer the Gozerian, and Constantine was an expert on the old bird.

Their contact in this node of time and place is “Pete Vankman” and he and Constantine sort of clashed. Maybe their caustic, sarcastic personalities didn’t jive too well together. Two people can’t both be the coolest guy in the room. The Old Man had been checking the occult literature we’d ascertained thanks to John Constantine, and soon the Swamp Thing would join them—once the breakout of ghosts and goblin-spirits and attacks started.

On the streets of New York, and outbreak occurred, and the swarming poltergeist population decloaked before the population, and its usual numbers were multiplied enormously by a rift spewing from a single sourced channel, a rift had opened up, and The Swamp Thing had established a safe base of operations for them. The Janus Nexus had to adapt, to strange circumstances, and this was a ‘whopper.

So, inside the magical matrix created by the roots and tendrils and wooded masses, grasses, and fungus a Fortress was near-instantly manifested by the bog god, Earth Elemental, amazing Swamp Creature. Constantine liked to swat him down a peg, and bantered to him like any old mate. Inside the Headquarters we could stage our campaign against the Absolute Infestation of New York City. The Poltergeists flying through the streets, posing as Taxi drivers as emaciated husks of dead bodies, re-animated by powerful Dark Powers, and hot dog consuming frenzied, fat, goblin-demons ran around like mad clowns, stirring up emotions and causing general, yet playful, chaos.

“That’s one of the fastest I’ve ever seen of them.” Constantine cooly remarked, standing casually yet powerfully, and confident, unafraid apparently of the daunting task here in front of him. “Look at him go, the green one.” The creature was zipping around, eating whatever street-foot was left on the street.

[the Stakes] stands up, from a crouched position behind some cover, “well, shall we go out?” flipping a wooden stake in his hand, ready to combat the supernatural parasites.

The Old Man says they should scout around a bit, but report back quickly; don’t range too far out, but keep an ear out. See if you can find out any more information.

They meet up with Pete Vankman.

They meet up with Gambit.

Gambit tells them about the warning by Apocalypse, and the group resolves to coordinate and prepare for the arrival of this threat to a super-charged ‘Apocalypse.’ The monster Myotismon was the previous Digital Monster that [the Stakes] had dealt with, and now the next evolution of this evil form had come about, to further threaten the mortal realm.

Constantine was here, this time, and we had all gotten stronger, smarter, and more well-equipped. A few ghostly apparitions attacked us, and then it was a swarm… Constantine did some work, I’m not gonna lie, and his protection spells were obliterating 90% of their threats.

The demon dogs jumped out, the spells did not affect them, and [the Stakes] did battle with them, but was careful to quickly escape before taking mortal damage from them. After they are subdued, we see a red-eyed massive Apocalypse, who is collapsed on his belly and fighting with only the upper portion of his torso, and being controlled by Puppetmon, or Piedmon if Puppetmon is already defeated, Piedmon is performing with them as if by marionette strings, laughing, and the group does battle, alongside Gambit, to take down the ornery red-eyes corrupted form of Apocalypse.

He would not be the form of the Destroyer.

Gozer the Gozerian was next, and they were forcibly turned to the town of Derry, where the crew must investigate the location of an evil force there, driven to intervene by the pleadings of the poor children which the Old Man and Constantine were sympathetic to. Gambit had disbanded after we had cleaned up Apocalypse, and all we had were these kids as back up, and one big kid: John C.

Our crew found the clown at several spots around Derry, and after an encounter, but no victory, we had received a ‘picture from Derry,’ which contained a photograph of a living paranormal entity caught inside—at least a portion of it. It was a portion of a creature, and a portion of it’s very soul. We brought it back to Chicago, to “Bob,” the

Ghost Adviser of Harry Dresden, and he said he had found another similar thing, during one of the ‘Dresden Files’ and that his had been a little worm in the top left corner of the photograph.

Bob was a host manifestation, allowed to project an image of himself in life and walk around, the confines of Harry Dresden’s spell-infused rental. He is confined to a skull forever, but, thanks to Harry, he gets to stretch his legs out on a regular basis.

He only gets sent back to the skill if his advise gets too… sharp. Or if Harry’s getting laid.

Bob says the photo can be traded, bartered, but the thing that would want it most is the thing who’s piece of soul is infused within the thing. Constantine says he thinks he can get an offer on the Black Markets, and it’s always safe and best to check in and look at the price out there on it.

Harry sometimes tried to reel John in a bit, but he was also admiring of the rival wizard, and he didn’t like being the second wizard in the room. No wizard ever liked that situation very much. But part of being a well-rounded Mage means you can play within a team, any team, any assemblage of miscreants and misfits one may find one’s self involved with, and so the banter would have to be precise and scathing.

“”Bob” seems useful.” Constantine remarks to Dresden. He helps with the Googling.” Constantine grabs at his hockey stick, “nice staff, feels powerful,” Dresden smiled, “Thanks, got me out of as many binds as the drum stick has.” Constantine said: “you run a tight ship here, Dresden, I think we have a real chance to beat this thing, if we work together—“ And then the Swamp Creature emerged from nearly thin-air, growing itself into fresh green vegetation in the middle of the room, announcing he had summon them to return to the New York Fortress of the Green, for their Head Quarters was under attack.

Beetlegeuse

Beetlegeuse the famous parasitic shade that was always harassing them, had been working double-time against the Janus Nexus in the timeline wars, just for the element of anarchy usually it seemed, but now coordinated his efforts for a means, and now he was teaming up with the Cenobites, and now the two teams would merge: on both sides: and Blade, Jack Crow, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer conjoin, to take on the arraying forces of Darkness, assembled by the time-spanned life of Posthumous. The crew was a real powerhouse now, and the Digital Domain was their next target.

…

The Digital Domain

Androidmon. Androidmon returns in the battle with Piedmon, even though the Digital Monster wasn’t nearly as strong as the Mega level monsters doing battle now. He could help, fending off threats against the children, what a devastating tragedy it would be if one of these young ones got seriously hurt—and now through the portal, the Old Man, [the Stakes], and all their crew came through the portal into the digital domain.

There was a massive house there, a whole compound, and a theatre in the backyard. They were on a small plot of landed suspended about a mile up along a thing column. In the center of the compound Piedmon sits at a massive Telescope, observing anywhere he wants in the Digital World, HA-HA! he laughs watching the group arrive. None of these fools could defeat him, his power was on an absolute different level! He was a Destroyer! An archetype of the harbinger of the Final Battle! Bringer of the Apocalyose—the Ghenna!”

The Count had been a little like this one. More so than Myotismon. It was the clown part. And the demon from Derry, Pennywise the clown, and that mobster who fell into that vat of chemicals, Jack Napier, who started taking over the criminal underground of Gotham, and taking the mob throne by terror and force. They all use poison. They all use deception—and our own good will against us.

The Joker’s city goons and his mimes are the moat we would have to cross to find the Batman. Constantine called him the Black Dragon, and we needed him to defeat this clown “Digimon.” Batman should be able to pull it off. He’s the only bloke I know I can think of to call about it.”

The Bell Tower

Batman has taken a beating, in the top of the Belltower, having crashlanded his plane on the steps of out front. As soon as punched the clown, he instead turned around, as our portal had triggered him, and we took him and his girlfriend back to the Janus Nexus. I guess we inadvertently saved the Joker fellow.

Ah well, for now, he’s just a small fry. We had the “many forms of the Destroyer” to contend with. Right now, the form I was concerned about was Wargreymon.

Constantine is trying to cajole “Metalgreymon” to evolve to the next stage, greatly increasing its power. Now it was official: these creatures are the most powerful thing he’d ever seen. Morally neutral: some the form of dinosaurs who spit fire balls, these Digital Realm “monsters” will be the key to figure. Their sheer power was on another level, and not it was time for John to learning everything he can about them all.

This Metalgreymon was a hybrid dinosaur and Android and it was unsurprisingly very promising from the vantage point of Constantine. He had gotten naturally along with Thai, and took him under his wing as a kind of understudy.

Harry Dresden held back with Matt, and the two would become best friends after their survivals here, and victories… and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was happy to hang out with some real ‘girls’ for a change—and Izzy and Joe were in awe of Blade, and Jack Crow supplied any of the info Izzy would need. Joe was taught how to toughen up a little by blade, who teaches him basic martial arts. To boost his confidence. When Wargreymon came around the fighting potential of our group had more than doubled—and we even tracked down and sprung a sneak attack on ‘The Fangs’ character de jour, Postbumous, and they did battle, to the Vampire’s avail. The group scared off Posthumous as they recovered Agumon from the battlefield. The Angelic Angemon was needed to hold off [The Famgs], and it escaped away without taking any lives.

Posthumous would disappear and recuperate. He had delivered a message to Lord Piedmon, who had now been told the last location of attack upon the timeline, and he chose another in which to counter-attack.

…

The Prophet Paul Atreides, the Pharaohs, The Mummy, Fairies of Brittania, werewolves in Cinema, the novelization of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and Cinematic Depiction by the Director of ‘The Godfather’). The death of Duncan Idaho. A honorable warrior sacrifice: a ‘ghoula.’

A scientific replication by an advanced race of cybernetic-minded societies, called Ixians, had manufactured a process whereby Duncan Idaho, the Dune hero who sacrificed himself in order to save Jessica, and her son Paul, intuiting somehow that they would have the Golden Path, and the jihad or religious war that would rage across the Galactic Empire, and the desert planet Dune was perfect for creating this stranglehold of power because it was the only source of the commodity called ‘spice’, without which stellar travel, at warp speeds, is not possible (and it may be wormholes), and so restricted spice flow would lock the gears of trade into stagnation, the crumbling system of connected worlds, by spice trade, could not trade or travel far, and so degradation took place, and the cult of Paul Atreides has swept up the people of the Galaxy, a primal kind of tribalism had usurped the delicate machinery of royal houses, of fighting Feudal Households, regressively violent and power hungry, like the Harkonnens, always sabotage, always spy, cheat, lie, steal, and murder…

The Dune ‘fremen’ people have sietches of deposits of water underground, in secret, across the landscape of Arrakis, and their true military had always been built up, in secret, a massive military-based population of religious extremists, and the day the Harkonen landed and started mistreating then native spice harvesters of Arrakis was the day they sealed their fate, as the sietches built up in fight man-power on a secret and enormous scale… and the militant, Spartan warriors of the Fremen can be said to be the best soldiers in the Galaxy. The Jihad would begin against the first real opposition, the Sadukar, and the Emperor’s warrior planet, hardened terrain and well-trained battle in sieging Planets trained battalions of drop-in soldiers, traveling with all the spice reserves left, spreading the cult of personality of Paul, and his family is a Galactic Royal Line unlike any other…

Fast Forward a few thousand years, and we have the lineage of Paul Atreides still enthroned, and also a likeness to Duncan Idaho, a ‘Ghola’ who is made in a lab, by the Ixian, by the God Emperor’s allowance, to make for him a truer and truer Duncan, and along his vast reign he has almost perpetually had a living Duncan Idaho beside him, he said it was comforting to the Paul Atreides in him, and that he somehow was simultaneously his father and his father’s father, through psychic Forces, exacerbated by contact with the spice of Arrakis, and Oracle is awakened inside me… and I am… my ancestors… ancestral knowledge, is it held within the genes? How can this knowledge of lifetimes be imbued within Leto, he had been born like Alia, of the Knife, the supposed abomination, a child who had been born fully adult, with ancestral knowledge upon birth, and the Fremen closer to the Bene Geserit witches fear the abominations, mistakes of the eugenics campaign, trying to make the Kizatz Haderach (or however you spell it).

Stilgar

Rocky 4

Boxing

Baki the Grappler

Invasion of Saiyans

Goku and Frieza

Boxing2

The Soviets: Homeland Advantage

The Bell Tower

“You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses, would ya?”

Perfect Cell

Yujiro Hanma

Gozer the Gozerian

Vigo the Carpathian

The Indian Burial Grounds: Carol Ann

Pazuzu

The Exorcist

Pennywise and the town of Derry

Dream-catcher

Comic-Book Vampires

Piedmon

Joker: Axis Chemicals

Flugenheim Museum

Loki

The Mask

…

Gameplay note:

The idle animation will be a head swivel to look in the direction directly behind him, and then rocking back to the forward static position. Occasionally he looks off to the left-side as well. His second attack technique is an upward whipping kind of strike, and then landing that attack into a kind of two-handed blocking stance, where he can deflect all damage for a second or two, and the upward diagonal attack can be used hit targets that are further up on the screen, as all we’ve had so far with Castor is the two-strike, mid-section targeted, step-through strike (maximum range). Now the massively-built Paladin, Castor, is capable of these two attacks.

Castor goes to a Temple… in his third segment. It is a ruin, and inside is found (perhaps a Carthaginian ruin) a technological node that is almost cartoonish. It was brightly colored, as if designed to be cool to appease children, and then the L.I. G.H.T. hologram platform turns on, and an image of Dr. Light appears on screen.

“Mega Man. Mega Man, is that you?”

No…

“Oh, it’s you. You’re too big a fellow to be good for jumping all about: here.”

He gives you an item.

“An upgrade. It’s the Sandals of Hermes, they’ll digitally fuse into your person, and give you the double-jump, wall jump, and wall slide abilities. With the next upgraded boots, you get a dash for Castor. And maybe an extra-charged Run, the Juggernaut Charge maybe doing some good attack damage.

Get to play temporarily as the future slayer, and you get double, even triple-jumps, glides downwards if there’s room in the level for it, and multiple 5,6,7,8 hit attack mid-air, quick moving on the ground level, when the camera freezes in battle mode, he can do multi-move attacks for ranged projectiles, and for melee a couple of variations of multiple attack animations, in mid-air there’s a downward diagonal strike where the wings and entire body positioning is geared downward like a hawk, rigidly extending a Gladius sword outward, as far as the winged-warrior could stretch outwardly and maintain maximum strength, in case of retaliation. But, the character can float and utilize the upper portion of the screen, while dive-bombing enemies below, and trapping them in multi-hit combos, with damage strike of up to 8x to 16x times, inflict massive exponential damage the more sequential strikes you’re able to pull off uninterrupted.

The complete breakdown of the Paladin playthrough—from the beginning moments.

The scene begins, and as will be customary they left 1/5th of the screen or so will be jetting out to the right close a little, close to center stage almost, and in this instance will probably be a background painting of some estate in the landscape background.

The Bald-Headed Knight, Castor, is also a ‘Paladin’, or a knight with the authorities granted of a king, the Palacial Estates Representative abroad, the Janus Nexus warrior agents are known as Paladins, and their very Order had begun upon the literal Palatine Hill in Ancient Rome.

He walks from stage left, to center stage, then the character follows him around, like Super Mario, keeping Castor in center stage with the camera, but not able to go on any further to the left, so you must begin to walk to the right-hand side of the stage. Quickly, you will be stopped center screen, and the stage in the background layer will stop, confining you to fight in this concentrated area, and Castor sees a swarm appear on the right-hand side of the screen, heading left, in clumps and then larger swarms—the Paladin has one attack animation at first, to which he holds his enormous two-handed sword up to his face, his eyes closed in prayer, he then rears back and powerfully swings the Zweinhander at the mid-section, and then stepping through with a mid-section swipe from the left side—shooting for maximum range and then recovering to a static stance. Only walking and this attack, maybe a climbing animation.

Castor fights back a few swarms of zombies, and then is joined by black-haired Posthumous, long-haired Posthumous, he was geared up for a fight, and hypes Castor up here, for the mission.

Posthumous performs the same attack, and climbs up to the second level platform, and then the game lets you control Castor and follow in doing the same. The Stakes and the Old Man appear, the kid doesn’t have the same character model anymore, he is now not wearing a scarf, doesn’t have a crucifix perpetually held out in his other hand anymore, and he has a taller, leaner build now, and wears a man’s sized trench coat. In Roman Times he would have some clothing made, military issue, and so he had battle arm from one of the Legions, but he had nothing so far stashed away in Renaissance Italy, at this moment or any other in the slipstream, so for now he didn’t have any lavish armor or weaponry stashed away—nothing like he had in, say, America—oh he wish he had his stash here, that he had tucked away safely in North America (of the 19th or 20th Century).

Lots of black powder in both eras, lots of fuels and explosives, ammunition, and lots of good stashes, because of the future-research into history, and finding out which places remained abandoned, and unscuffled, deep into the 20th Century. With time travel, we had ‘all’ of the best stashes. We literally ‘knew’ they were places that would be undisturbed for Decades.

The slayer, not the apprentice, with the scarf and the crucifix, now has the trench coat, and slightly longer hair, and athletic and tall build. Probably an age right after puberty, and sweat-pants and dressing underneath the coat that looks like Casey-Jones from Ninja Turtles. Harry Dresden was the one who uses Hockey Sticks for combat.

The Stakes uses a literal wooden stake, and here we have the same town, the same night, and the Stakes having a walk animation, and a run animation, and a jump animation, and when the zombie npcs start to arrive, the stakes swings and hits the zombie. It’s a swinging, right-hook punch, hitting with the top of the wooden stake, a hammer strike, arcs from the right-hand side and comes in for the jaw of the enemy target. After a few hits and running away, a short two-hit combo is added after the original running dash-attack, and the third attack does good damage and has high range. There’s a jumping-diagonal downwards attacked, staking downward with both hands holding wooden stakes, and then maybe a movement dash, and maybe a wall jump. Jump and grab a ledge survival maneuver unlock. Learn a turn-off of the turn around animation, so you can now instantly turn around.

From here on, you have movement upgrades to move around more like Mega Man X, or Shinobi 3, and so the perhaps throwing of the stakes, projectile attack technique leads to a gameplay mechanic change, of running and platforming.

Then, the heavy-hitters, and boxing combos takes a turn for your build, and the the next tier is grappling techniques and kick-boxing, judo, and then gun-fighting in Western era, and more complex hand-to-hand techniques in the Baki the Grappler and ‘Road House’ era.

Ranged weapons will be elucidated upon by Jack Crow, the veteran Vampire Hunter, and coven exterminator, and the Dark Arts taught as available as they are Morally Neutral, and are taught by The Crow. Other powers are taught by Dresden, who saves a kid from these Raven Ghoul-entities, the Swamp Thing, who finds the source to horrifying illusions, and the sources of them, and John Constantine, who advises Swamp Thing, and always has a trick up his sleeve.

Another literary villain who becomes a source of information is Moriarty, Professor, and top-tier rival from Sherlock Holmes lore, a digital version, and then there’s also William Gull, a top-hat wearing Jack the Ripper character from Alan Moore’s ‘From Hell’. He guides into a discussion of Magic. A ritual of blood, and the spirit of murderous psychopaths: some just evil, some possessed by Poltergeist spirits, some turned into werewolves, on the digital plane, if not in visible reality, but at the site of the murders it looked real, the victims would never be able to relay the black eyes they saw—all black, and the murderers lower jaw, overlapping like an ogre, and grimace of a punishing devil across the lunatics face. A Lycanthrope, who’s betrayal is the display, the pushing of the boundaries, wanting to exist in the light of man, but the horrors not allowing it to be, the system of Justice hiding things away from the Public, a little. Things a little too grim to need repeating, if they could avoid it. Wrap the case up, then maybe think about publishing something about it. But for now, confidentiality is key in law enforcement.

The strikes of Castor have been laid out, of the future slayer, and the Present era Slayer, [the Stakes], and those are the only playable characters, unless you played the Fangs portion of the game.

The Fangs

The first playable character in the Fangs half of the initial campaign is the Mad Count. He is a Nosferatu for the first transformation phase, and has a kind of cartoonish thread comprising it, and quickly the beast discovered it had the ability, to as with Micky Mouse gloves, literally, would manifest and appear, a zipper exposed upon the very fabric of space-time itself, and make a portal, and travel to other places. Other realms, or even mad realms of the imagining. The madness of the early form is the source of the power: for worm hole generation was one of the rarest of dark talents, given to kindred who have been embraced in more modern eras. There are anomalies in every system.

In the training and equipping and arming segments we will go through a whole host of new animations, whether boxing, grappling, or projectiles is your focus, you can unlock animations for a kick-boxing build, a melee weapons build (Blade recommends the knife martial arts selection), and Dalton and Rocky Balboa are there to teach you stand-up fighting. The best for training in grappling techniques is Baki, ‘The Grappler,’ or one of his compatriots like Dopo Orochi. He’s almost always in a Gi. Sometimes he’s in a nice suite. Sometimes he’s in his nightlife attire. The “Tiger Slayer” purportedly once defeated a tiger by knockout in one-on-one combat. His martial arts school is connected to the underground arena tournament fighting, and the new terms of the tournament had just been put in play:

Baki looked at Dopi Orochi; he looked at Doyle, the tricky one, and Dorian, they were ‘all’ tricky ones, and there was the Great Sea King Retsu, and Jack “the Hammer” Hanma, Baki’s older brother, who was monstrous, and Muhammad Ali Jr., and soon there would be Oliva, and the Chinese fighters, the Sea Emperor, the Oldest and Most experienced fighter in the world, and Finally Yujiro Hanma, himself.

The massive Yujiro, with the demon-face famously on his back, was the strongest “Being on Earth.” Olivia was #1 in his Arizona palace-penitentiary set up. The Sea Emperor learned about the Japanese-American team’s fighters, on the internet, and learned about Doyle and Retsu’s fight, in the bar, where they blew fire at each other, and Retsu opened up his coat to reveal dozens of ringed-throwing knives, to which he lit Doyle up, with even one of his projectiles sticking out of his eye.

We then see Doyle, earlier, before the start of the official tournament, attacking Baki, cross-dressed as a woman, using any technique in his arsenal to get a win.

That was what it was all about, all the fighters knew and did not need to say out loud: an unwritten code of honor, to take anyone anywhere and any time—and to be the best at the art of combat. The kind of fighters who… “wish to finally taste defeat.” True defeat, it’s eluded these men, when working at ‘their’ best; the kind of death-row prisoners who, out of boredom, already lashed out at the soft world of modern man, thinking there would be no real challenge for them in their combat… until they heard about Baki.

There was a legend of a Yujiro Hanma, but nobody thought it was a real fighter—just something big fighters told to little fighters to help tuck them into bed at night.

But in Japan, the Hanma family was real, and Jack, the brother, hand undergone excruciating limb-extension procedures, and an experimental steroid regiment guided by a medical scientist, who made Jack and absolute beast through drug use, and a worthy frame finally for which to call a Hanma’s. But Yujiro would certainly disagree.

That day, later that night that is, Doyle, Retsu, and Jack happened to run into one another. In a vignette into Jack’s past, we see actually a little into the future, with the Muhammad Ali Jr story arc, where he intrudes upon Jack’s Steak Dinner Meal Time. It’s okay, it doesn’t take long. He eats the massive Ribeye in one bite, wait—wasn’t there some bones in that?

Jack Hanma stands up from his table. Whoa. Anybody there then would say to themselves. THAT’s a big guy. He stand and looks down with a toothpick in him mouth, sucking on it, getting some gristle out of his teeth.

“So, we gonna do this?”

“Yeah. Let me pay, and meet me in the basement. Lots of room there.”

Downstairs, Muhammad Ali Jr. dances like a boxer warming up. He shadow boxes a bit, maybe works up a little sweat even. Jack “Hammer” talked off his massive sweatshirt. His upper body is absolutely BUILT. The eyes go red, the alligator smile, and Jack Hanma devastates the young hot shot boxer, the son of the legendary Cassius Clay, but Jack didn’t care about that sort of thing. Hanmas weren’t the same as regular human beings. You had to be really something special to take on a Hanma.

Baki wasn’t any exception. He had just gotten laid for the first time, to be honest, and he was able to do things his way, and she got to do things her way too. It was good; and it was empowering for him, and so Baki, when assaulted by a real murderous psychopath, as well as another Monster, a Russian fugitive on the run from the law like the rest of them, the Death Row Prisoner story arc, with the messages to Baki, on the news channels, written in blood at the scene of the carnage, their all heading to Tokyo. They claim they want to “taste defeat” and Baki was happy to oblige each and every one of them. In the park, the first murderous psycho recognized Baki. He wore a hat, obfuscating his identity, dressed like a worker, for the city or some kind of maintenance, and he had a whipping kind of martial arts technique, and master of using strange principles of suction to horrifically kill his opponents, but Baki slaps back. The opponent slaps at Baki, tearing strips of skin off of him, but Baki does it right back to him, his face, growing toothless, contorts into a grimace of pain, as he realizes this young man is much more agile, fast, and powerful than he ever was, even at his absolute best. The horror of that encounter is Earth-Shaking. The pride of the psycho was a Black Dragon’s pride, and he was like a Hannibal Lecter figure, he was kept in see-through cages, where he couldn’t possibly use anything to kill the guards, but still managed to sometimes find a way, and this time it was by those weird suction-cup techniques he uses, shattering the extra-strength material and escaping after several horrific murders, and Dorian and the Russian guy had escaped from similar prisons, and now the Russian guy was here too, quickly recognizing that he needed to side with the slicked-back hair guy, because this kid seemed to be overpowered right now.

Baki kicks both of their asses and then runs away. The next thing that we see is Dorian watching out over Retsu. When Retsu awakens, he realizes that he’s been protected all night by the injured Dorian, whom he himself had injured, now despite it all had been such a faithful guardian, and so now Retsu felt it was his turn to display some honor, to his new found friend, and strapping Dorian up to himself he ran across traffic and across town to the hospital, even running on water for a moment with Dorian on his back, in order to take a short cut and not risk missing the opportunity to help his friend.

Dorian is shown for his use of explosives in a one-on-one combat scenario. The General says he seems too open to utilize any tactic that seems appealing to him: no matter how Barbaric, and the General seems to not like the Scottsman’s style.

Finally, Doppo Orochi takes on Dorian outside, in a street fight, the flashy Chinese Kung Fu is made a bit foolish to the practical Kenpo karate of the Orochi School, and the Tiger Slayer explains how Dorian severed his hand with a concealed razor-sharp chord last time. The cast breaks into pieces, revealing somehow that Dopo Orochi’s hand wasn’t severed anymore, and he tells the story of putting his own hand on ice and immediately heading to a surgeon he knows who does this sort of thing, and the brilliant bastard was able to put his hand and arm back together, and now this time in a pure display of martial arts hand-to-hand combat Dorian gets his bones caved in by a brutal and relentless lashing by the battle-hardened, “god of war.”

Dopo Orochi in the epilogue, on a sunny day, approaches Muhammad Ali Jr., with some broken up hands, and taunts him into an exhibition.

The fighting master viciously breaks the young contender’s hands even more broken than they were to begin with, and teaches him a lesson in humility that he probably won’t ever even get.

Dumb kids.

The Martial Arts tournament begins, with Sea Emperor Kaku, slated to fight against Yujiro Hanma.