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Bunkerkampf (Mortuus Orbis Part Two)	By : Sparrow & InBrightestDay Category: -Misc Video Games/RPGs > Crossovers Views: 1830 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the franchises, characters, or anything else from the settings in this collection. These include Street Fighter, Marvel, Sailor Moon, Kill La Kill, and others. I made no money from this work.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
The first light of consciousness brought with it pain, and surprise, as Satsuki Kiryruin found she was still alive. Blinking weakly, she found herself lying on her back in a medical gurney, back in the hospital bay. She tried to lever herself up on her elbows, and was immediately rewarded by a sharp burst of pain, like daggers in her chest, as well as the dull sear of the half-healed burns on her stomach.
“Ouch,” she said, to nobody in particular. The curtain around one of the beds across from her was abruptly pulled back, and from it strode Doctor McCoy, his blue uniform shirt splattered with blood, and its sleeves rolled halfway up his arms.
“Yeah, try not to move too much,” he said to her, crossing the room to wash his bloody hands in the sink. “Your sternum's cracked. I thought you were dead at first, but apparently that thing you wear that’s pretending to be a school uniform is bulletproof.”
“Báthory?” Satsuki said, trying to find a way of breathing that wouldn't make her chest hurt.
“Gone,” McCoy said with a sharp shake of his head. “The others chased her out into the city. Don’t know where she’s gone, but they’ve all come back now.”
In the bed he had just left, Satsuki could see Vi, unconscious and pale-looking, with the side of her neck swathed in bandages. An IV line went from her arm to that of Mary Jane, who was sitting next to the bed, deep in thought.
McCoy crossed the room again, grumbling to himself about needing to blood-type people and start a blood bank, about the goddamn state of this equipment, like something out of the blasted middle ages, and so on. The bed he went over to had Johnny Silverhand sitting on it, a bag of ice held to his head. McCoy lifted the bag, inspected the cyberpunk’s scalp, and pronounced him a lucky sonofabitch.
“Won’t need any stitches, you’re fine. Let me know right away if you have any strange vomiting or dizziness, though. Can’t rule out a concussion at this stage.”
“Thanks doc,” Johnny said, sliding off the bed and onto his feet. “I owe you one.”
McCoy waved it off, but Satsuki was no longer paying attention. The sight of Johnny made a realisation strike her like a bolt of lightning. It had been on her orders that Copperhead had been imprisoned, nearly tearing their small community apart on the spot. But she had been wrong. It hadn’t been Copperhead who had drugged her and stolen Bazukan. Instead it had been Báthory, whose word Satsuki had trusted even when she should have known not to.
I made a mistake.
The truth of it was inescapable. She had played right into Báthory’s hands, nearly to the ruin of all.
Satsuki ground her teeth. One did not become a mighty ruler if they were governed by doubt. Yet, none could govern in absolute certainty. She had thought herself superior, convinced that she knew better than the myriad autocrats and monarchs who had come before, yet she had made the same mistake as all the rest of them.
She had fallen victim to pride. So certain of the surety of her own beliefs that she had stopped considering if what she had been doing was wrong, that she could have erred.
I made a mistake, she thought again, with a weary shake of her head. May I live to regret it.
Something had to be done. She no longer felt convinced that she alone had the strength and will to hold these people together in this place. After all, they had managed to chase Báthory away, while Satsuki had been passed out in a corner.
Like a sleepy teenager, she thought bitterly.
Abruptly the door opened, and through came Copperhead, stretching her arms out over her head.
“Gotta hand it to the limey,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “Took me a while to get out of all those cuffs and that crate.” Her eyes locked on Satsuki, lying helpless in her bed, and the acid-green orbs flashed. “Ah. Just who I wanted to see.”
She flicked her wrist, and the metal claws attached to her gauntlet sprang out to their fullest extent.
“I may be good at getting out of handcuffs,” she said, advancing on Satsuki as the girl feebly tried to get out of the bed. “But that doesn’t mean I enjoy-”
“Cop,” Johnny barked, catching her trailing hand with his silver one. “Leave it. She knows, it was the fucking doctor who took her sword, not you.”
Copperhead’s head snapped around and she snarled at Johnny, an actual snarl, like the kind of sound an animal would make. She tried to twist his wrist to get him to release her, but his mechanical hand rotated all the way around with no sign of difficulty, not giving up its grip.
"Look, the second she found out what that Nazi bitch was and what she'd done she wanted her dead just as much as the rest of us. She got fucking shot for that!" He pulled Copperhead closer, speaking in an urgent whisper that Satuski's remaining ear struggled to catch. "I made a mistake. She's not as bad as I thought."
Satsuki stared across at them, thinking hard, the beginnings of a new plan starting to form in her mind. It galled her to even consider, so beneath her it seemed, but she pushed those feelings away, considering how she could try and prevent this from happening again.
**
With everyone else busy in Medical, Isabeau made her way back toward the entrance. She wasn’t going out, no matter how much a part of her wanted to. While McCoy had told her she hadn’t lost enough blood to require a transfusion, she would still need to rest. Of course, he was busy, and she would need to do some of the care herself. The doctor had stitched the knife wound, but the arm hurt like buggery whenever she tried to use it, so she’d taken some cloth to make a sling with and then departed. She wouldn’t need assistance for this, having dressed her own wounds quite a few times over the course of her long career.
She ended up settling into one of the dormitories. They weren’t in use anymore, with all of them having since moved to the lower level, so there was little risk of being disturbed.
Taking a seat on the bed, Isabeau took off her greatcoat and began to fashion what she needed, working the cloth into the right form to support the weight of her arm for a while. It was something she’d done many times before, and didn’t require too much of her concentration. It allowed her mind to wander, travelling back to what had happened so short a while ago; to what Báthory had said to her.
To things she would rather never think about again.
Isabeau felt the heat behind her eyes, and pressed them shut, holding them that way until she felt she could continue. It didn’t happen, though, and it wasn’t long after she opened them that the first tear fell onto the sling and soaked into the fabric.
She shouldn’t be crying. It wasn’t right. She had duties to attend to, and others to keep safe. It was her responsibility to remain calm for their sakes.
Isabeau was normally so aware of her surroundings that she was surprised she didn’t hear the footsteps outside before the door opened, revealing Chun-Li.
“Oh,” Isabeau said quietly. “Your face.”
Chun-Li ran her fingertips over the stitches on her cheekbone, where Doctor McCoy had closed up the gash in her face from Báthory striking her with her own gun.
“It’s nothing. I’ve had worse.” She sat down on the end of the bed next to Isabeau. The other woman made no motion to move away.
“I saw you head down this way,” Chun-Li said. “I figured you might want to talk.”
“What is there to talk about?” Isabeau asked, doing her best to blink the tears away.
“You know what,” Chun-Li said quietly. Isabeau shook her head, trying to find a way to express this delicately. She was a knight; a woman of some stature, and she couldn’t very well start crying like a child.
Like a child…
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she said. “I can’t help thinking about what she said.”
“You don’t know that she was telling the truth,” Chun-Li said. “Báthory could have been lying just to mess with you.” Isabeau wanted to believe her. She wanted more than anything to believe her. Báthory had lied to her; had lied to all of them, and it would be a relief to think of this as just one more lie.
But she knew it was true.
“I keep thinking about how scared Makoto must have been,” Isabeau said, her voice thickening with tears. “I keep thinking about what could have happened, what that creature could have done to her, about how much pain she could have suffered, about her calling for help, screaming… and where was I? Where was I when she needed someone, when she needed anyone to help her?”
“I told you the other night,” Chun-Li said. “Do you remember? I said ‘whatever happens, it isn’t your fault.’”
“Then whose fault is it?” Isabeau said, louder than she’d wished. “I have been a knight since before any of you were born. This is what I was made for, what I’ve spent so many lives of men learning how to do, and yet for all that I was still fool enough to put my trust in a monster. Whose fault is that?”
“The monster’s,” Chun-Li said, looking Isabeau in the eye. “We’re all in this together, and we have to trust each other. If we don’t, then all of us could die. Breaking that trust was a terrible thing, and that’s on her, not you.” Isabeau nodded, and there was a long silence. She tried to absorb what Chun-Li had told her, and some part of her knew it was true.
None of it helped her stop crying. As she looked at Chun-Li again, all she could say was what was running through her head, over and over again.
“She didn’t deserve this.” Chun-Li didn’t argue with that. She didn’t say anything, in fact. She merely smiled sympathetically and shook her head.
Isabeau put her hand over her face and cried, unable to stop thinking about the little girl who wondered how her friends back in Japan were doing, who missed her mother and who just wanted to help all of them. Eventually, she felt Chun-Li’s arm wrap around her, and unable to stop herself, she leaned into the other woman, burying her face in Chun-Li’s shoulder. She smelled like flowers.
Chun-Li stayed silent, and after what felt like a very, very long time, Isabeau’s sobs quieted, until she was merely breathing. She didn’t want to say anything, afraid, perhaps, of exposing any further just how raw her emotions had become, but in the privacy of her mind, she said a silent prayer, asking that after fear, pain and suffering, one lost child might be granted happiness and peace, because she deserved it.
It was a simple thing, to ask for something like this, and for all Isabeau knew it didn’t change anything. Still, the act itself made her feel just a little bit better, and with that small piece of comfort came another thought, a question.
“How could she do it?” Isabeau asked quietly. “How does someone do something so horrible and feel no remorse?” Chun-Li was silent for a moment, and then Isabeau felt her shrug.
“She thought…” she started, trying to find the words, it seemed. “Báthory thought Makoto was… inferior; less than her. She was born in one place and Makoto was born in another and Báthory figured that made her… better.” The distaste was audible in her voice.
“But she and I aren’t from the same country,” Isabeau said. “Yet she thought I would help her. She seemed surprised when I didn’t.”
“Well, she might have thought you were more like her than you are.”
“But why?” Isabeau asked, pulling away to look at Chun-Li. “I’m not like… like her.”
“No…” Chun-Li said, and Isabeau could tell she was being very careful with her words. “There may have been some similarities, though.” She hesitated, and Isabeau frowned, prompting her to continue.
“For the last few weeks, Kyle and I have been dating,” Chun-Li said. “Well, more or less. You didn’t like me dating a white man, and you’ve never exactly been subtle about it.”
“Well…”
“I complained about it in the cafeteria, and you punched me.” Chun-Li wasn’t being aggressive, only firm.
“I was… I don’t...that is a far cry from…” Isabeau shook her head. It was different. She would never have done anything like what Báthory had...no, no of course not. This was simply a matter of proper decorum. There were different peoples, and mixing them was…
I thought you knew about the difference between people.
Báthory’s words echoed in Isabeau’s head, and try as she might she couldn’t get them out. She tried to convince herself that they weren’t alike, and that wasn’t wrong. Báthory felt she had the right to… to do horrible things, all because she felt she was better and…
And that idea, the simple thought that some people were better than others, was one Isabeau knew she had believed too. It was something she’d absorbed over the past century, the idea of the gap between the civilized and the savage, and that the civilized people, her people, were naturally superior.
No, she wasn’t Báthory, and she never had been, but…
“Chun-Li,” Isabeau said slowly, fighting to keep her voice level. “When April brought the box, the one containing Báthory’s effects, to your attention, you knew what they meant.” Chun-Li nodded. “And when we brought Báthory and the evidence to Satsuki, she knew what they meant.”
Isabeau took a deep breath. The pit opened before her. She knew that if she asked now, she might learn something she didn’t want to.
“Tell me what it all meant.”
It took some time for Chun-Li to explain, stopping at times to answer Isabeau’s questions, and Isabeau imagined that for the other woman it was simple history, if somewhat disturbing at times.
For her, however, this was a nightmare.
The Concert of Europe had collapsed on itself. Instead of keeping the peace, it had dragged the entire continent into the largest war humanity had ever seen. Monarchies had fallen, millions had perished, and in the end the victorious powers had established new treaties and alliances, all in the hope that the War to End All Wars would live up to its name.
And then it had happened again.
To Isabeau’s horror, the second war had been even larger, spreading to every continent on Earth. And the second blight to spread across Europe had come from Báthory’s homeland, where something had risen from the ashes of the Kaiser’s Germany, something far, far worse.
And all of it, the cult-like mentality, the facilities where men, women and children alike were slaughtered like animals, all of it had sprung from the simple belief that some people were simply inferior to others.
And the natural conclusion that the inferior should be culled.
No, Isabeau wasn’t Báthory, and she never had been, but she couldn’t deny that this could have happened to her. The people of Germany were no less intelligent than those of Britain; the idea could take root anywhere. With a shiver, Isabeau thought about the things she had known had already happened like that in her own world. Her own people’s empire. If she’d held onto those ideas, if she had built upon them, more and more as the decades passed, she might have become Báthory.
When Chun-Li finished, she looked nervous, and Isabeau couldn’t help but imagine that some of the horror must have shown on her face.
“I know this is probably a lot to take in,” she said, and Isabeau could do little more than nod dumbly in response. She felt adrift, her mind spinning as though it had been cut loose from her body. Then she felt her breathing hitch, and grabbed blindly for the wastebasket she had put next to the bed earlier, managing to drag it between her legs just as she vomited into it.
Chun-Li grimaced, watching as Isabeau retched and spat into the wastebin even after her stomach was empty, finally setting it aside and wiping her mouth with a trembling hand. Isabeau’s face was white, her eyes staring blankly out of it like she had seen a ghost.
“I’m sorry,” Isabeau mumbled, hardly even seeming to notice Chun-Li anymore. “I… I think I need to go and wash...” she trailed off, lurching to her feet and walking unsteadily into the bathroom.
Chun-Li sat awkwardly on the bed waiting for Isabeau to finish. She supposed it only made sense. She was just making a mental note to clean the wastebin out at some point when the door opened and Isabeau returned.
Chun-Li watched her warily; she still looked pretty spooked, but some of the colour had returned to her face, and her eyes weren’t quite as glazed.
“Are you gonna be okay?” she asked at last. Isabeau sniffed and shrugged, wincing as it strained her wounded shoulder.
“I have no idea. Maybe. Eventually. There are, um, some things I need to see to.”
Chun-Li stood up. “I can stay if you want?”
“No. Thank you. I’ll be alright.”
Nodding slowly, Chun-Li went to leave, taking the wastebasket with her.
“Wait!”
She looked back. There was a faintly plaintive expression on her face.
“I’m... so very, very sorry. About how I’ve acted. Towards you. And Kyle. You… I should never have treated you that way. You’re good people. The pair of you. You deserve to be happy.”
Chun-Li’s hand drifted to the bump on the back of her head where Isabeau had punched her the other day. Once she might have imagined such a statement from Isabeau would have brought her pleasure, but the look of utter misery and devastation on Isabeau’s face robbed it of all but the faintest satisfaction.
She nodded.
“Thank you.”
She stepped out through the door, and as it closed, she saw Isabeau staring morosely into space. For all that she had hated Isabeau at first, now Chun-Li found herself hoping that she would be alright in the end.
Then the door closed, and she was alone.
***
By the time Isabeau made her way back to Medical, her arm was properly fitted into the sling, and the color had returned to her face. No one looking would have been able to tell that she was anything other than a composed, noble warrior.
When the door slid away and she walked into the infirmary, most everyone was asleep, but Leonard McCoy looked over from where he stood, checking something by Satsuki’s bed.
“Whaddaya doing up so late?” he asked. Isabeau sighed.
“I don’t mean to disturb,” she said. “I merely need to speak to one of your patients.” she explained who, and the doctor nodded, motioning toward one of the beds.
April O’Neil lay awake, propped up on some pillows, a morphine drip going into one of her arms. Someone had found a gown for her somewhere, and Isabeau could see the bulky shapes of bandages beneath it, especially around her waist, chest, and leg. One of her hands was wrapped in bandages, the other had its fingers covered in sticking plasters. She yawned, and Isabeau winced as she saw the gaps in the young woman’s teeth where some of them had been ripped out.
She looked up sleepily as Isabeau approached, and looked puzzled at the sight of her.
“How are you?” Isabeau asked. April looked down at herself, and a pained expression flittered across April’s face.
“Doc says I have second-degree burns on my boobs, and on my…” she gestured between her legs and flinched, Isabeau nodding quickly to indicate she understood. April went on, pointing at her face with her unbandaged hand. “Three teeth missing, one fractured, so he says he’s gonna need to go in soon and dig the root out so he can put an implant in.” She held the hand up, displaying the plasters around the nails. “Also all my fingernails are gone, so it’s gonna be a while before they grow back. And, uh…”
April’s let out a shaky breath. “He says I’m gonna need surgery on my knee.” She saw Isabeau wince, and swallowed painfully before going on. “Báthory, um, she sawed through the ligament underneath my kneecap, and if he doesn’t join it back up again I’m not gonna be able to use the leg properly.”
She sighed quietly. “I think she did it like that on purpose.”
“I’m sorry,” Isabeau said, going to take April’s hand before thinking better of it, instead resting her hand on April’s shoulder and squeezing it gently. April nodded.
“Thanks. I guess, um, I’m alive, though. Because of you.”
The rawness in the young woman’s voice was such that Isabeau had to bite back tears again, her guts twisting in shame.
“I had wanted to talk to you,” she said, managing to keep from gasping. “If that’s alright.” April looked apprehensive, but eventually nodded.
“I may have…” Isabeau started, but then shook her head sharply. “I have gravely misjudged you, Miss April. What you did, uncovering Báthory’s crimes, took perception and intelligence of the highest degree.” April smiled a little. “And to endure what you did, to suffer at her hands, tell her nothing and retain the presence of mind to aid me when I fought her… that took incredible courage. I’ve known hoary old warriors who would have completely fallen to pieces under the kind of torment you had to endure.”
The redhead said nothing, but she did smile a little.
“I misjudged you, and I have been terribly unkind to you,” Isabeau said, “and I wanted you to know that I realize that. You have my sincerest apologies, for everything I’ve said to you. For how I have acted towards you.”
There was a long silence.
“You know,” April said at last, quietly, peering up at Isabeau with what might have been the start of a smile. “I thought you hated me so much. I never expected you'd be the one who'd come save me.”
Isabeau could only smile.
"In that case I'm very glad to have proved you wrong."
This made April chuckle, and it did Isabeau good to see it.
“Good night, April.” She made to leave, but April pointed at her arm.
“How are you doing?” she asked. “I saw you get stabbed during the fight.”
“Oh,” Isabeau looked at her own wound, and then waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve had worse. ‘Tis but a scratch.”
April stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“What?” Isabeau had no idea what was so funny. That just made April laugh harder.
****
The next morning, Satsuki called another meeting. Given that April couldn’t walk by herself, Satsuki was still having trouble breathing, Vi seemed to be coming down with something and Dr. McCoy needed to tend to all of them, the meeting was held in Medical instead of the common room.
It was oddly familiar, Satsuki thought, addressing the others from a bed. It wasn’t so long ago she had been here with a fever. The position she found herself in was frustrating, but at the same time she was hardly the only one in this state. She needn’t exactly worry about looking weak.
Once all ten inhabitants of the Bunker had filed into the room, either seating themselves or, in McCoy’s case, moving around the room to tend to his patients, she felt it was time to begin.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said, taking a breath and wincing slightly in pain. “I’ve called you all here because of what happened yesterday.” She paused before continuing. “I made a mistake.”
There was a derisive snort from Copperhead. Satsuki was debating whether or not to say anything when Johnny put a hand on her arm, shaking his head gently, and then looked back at her, encouraging her to continue.
“I became certain of my own beliefs,” Satsuki said. “So certain that I detained someone without evidence, based on the suggestion of a woman who turned out to be the actual criminal. It very nearly escalated to the point where lives could have been lost. It seems clear to me that a new strategy is necessary, to prevent something like this from happening again.” She looked around the room again. She had gone over several different versions of what she was about to say, and believed she had settled on the best one, but this was still where she would be taking a risk. Johnny was still something of an unpredictable element, and she couldn’t be sure precisely how he would react.
“To keep this a safe shelter, and perhaps one day be more than that, I will need your help. Not merely as soldiers, workers or doctors, but as advisors. When a major decision faces us, I will need all of you to offer your own thoughts on the situation, and on what path we should take next.”
There was a moment of silence, all of the assembled looking back and forth among themselves. McCoy was the first to speak, the doctor half-smiling and nodding a little.
“Used to do the same thing for the captain,” he said, “even if half the time he ended up listening to Spock instead.”
“I’ve always been more of get-shit-done kind of girl,” Vi said from her bed, “but if we’re going to do things like this, yeah, try and stop me from tellin’ you what I think.” Slowly Isabeau, Chun-Li, Kyle, Mary Jane and April all expressed similar sentiments. When things finally came around to Copperhead, she leaned forward, her reptilian eyes narrowing.
“You really serious about this?” she asked warily. Satsuki nodded.
“So this is, what, an actual democracy?” Johnny asked from beside her.
“For now,” Satsuki answered. She had to be careful not to give anyone the wrong impression. “At the moment there are only ten of us here, but I intend for that number to grow, and as it does, there will come a point where pure democracy will become… inefficient. At that point we’ll likely need to transition into something more like a council.
“Representative democracy, then,” Johnny said, a grin creeping onto his face. Satsuki sighed.
“Yes,” she said. Johnny seemed to think about it for a minute, and then nodded.
“Good place to start.” He looked over at Copperhead, who still looked mildly annoyed, but ended up nodding.
“Yeah, alright,” she said. “Let’s give this a shot.” Looking around the room once again, Satsuki found all of them in agreement.
“So,” Kyle said, “what’s our first order of business, then?” Satsuki made to straighten up in the bed, only for a flash of pain in her chest to remind her that that was a bad idea.
“I believe,” she said, “that the first thing we need to do is go upstairs and destroy the desk in the building above.
“You mean the one with the access button?” Chun-Li asked. “Won’t that keep us from getting in?”
“The door can still be opened from the inside,” Satsuki replied. “On the floor beneath us there appeared to be other elevators, which likely lead to other security areas like this one. This means there are other access points to the surface, and we can map out where those emerge. I think it’s no longer wise, however, to have this one be easily accessible from the city.”
“You’re talking about Báthory,” Mary Jane said, and Satsuki nodded.
“That’s not exactly a friendly place,” Vi said. “I don’t think anybody lasts that long on their own up there. If you guys did chase her out there, what are the odds she makes it more than a few days?”
“For her?” Isabeau responded, “I believe the odds are far too high.”
“I agree,” Satsuki said. “As lucky as we’d all be if she died up there, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Báthory Mengele just yet.”

If anyone wants to leave a review or comment on this story, please do so on this thread here: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/topic/69143-mortuus-orbis-discussion-thread/

AN:
Well, I guess that's it for now. I had planned for more, but since we finished this one, about a year ago now, I haven't felt like writing anything else. The more I came up with the more complicated it all got, the more confused, and the less certain I was of where to actually pick it up and start.
I might figure something out. I might not. If anyone's actually read this far, please, let me know what you've thought of all this.
Until then.
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Bunkerkampf (Mortuus Orbis Part Two)