Dan woke up from the nap he’d been having when his ears registered that it was far too silent for the room he and Ran were sharing. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he quickly took in his surroundings. Ran was cleaning her camera near the mirrors. A closet containing some extra sets of blue school uniforms, as well as some black and pink karate uniforms was open in the corner of the room. On Dan’s advice, the extra clothes had been brought along in case their outfits got shredded, burned, or stained with blood in the early rounds. The small cage they’d brought with them was still near the doorway, and the...

...waitaminute...

...oooohhhh shit!

"Sis? Where’s Gouki?" Dan asked, his eyes never leaving the opened animal cage. The illusion of intense concentration he tried to create dissolved when he stood up, as his knocking knees showed how frightened he had become. Bringing Gouki had been bad. Gouki was bad. Gouki in a crowded stadium full of Shotokan fanboys and haters was really, really bad.

"Huh?" Ran asked, not knowing her sibling had gotten up. "Oh, him. Mike was here a second ago. He told Gouki something about toast in the hallways, opened the cage, demon-boy took off like a puppy on speed. Sorry but I wasn’t paying much attention. Weird, though, I must say."

"Right. I’ll go find him." Dan said hurriedly as he headed for the door. Maybe, maybe he could get Gouki contained before his match with Ken was called. He ran out the door, and was immediately blinded by a blinding light of blindingness.

“Hi folks!” a chipper voice said from several feet down. “I’m Roll Casket Volnutt Light, and with me is Dan Hibiki, soon to be competing once we finish cleaning up from the Polnareff/Donovan match. Mr. Hibiki, do you have anything to say about your match with the famous Ken Masters?”

Looking down, Dan finally saw the smiling face of a young blond girl holding a microphone out to him. While he normally loved the attention, Gouki was more important. “Sorry, but I really don’t have time–“

“What about Mr. Masters’ comment that you are a ‘watered-down, no-talent Shotokan ripoff’?” Roll sighed. Well, Ken probably said something like that. Yeah. They needed ratings, anway.

Dan froze on site, and shot a look of pure death to the camera as he snatched up the microphone. Gouki could wait.

“HAH! Ken must be thinking that being able to live in Ryu’s shadow is an accomplishment!” he said, laughing to the ever-rolling camera. This was going to be fun!

"All right, Ken-san, this is it, the big night, your first match."

Ken looked at himself in the mirror and scowled. While he was sleeping, Sodom had apparently plastered his face with kabuki war paint, war paint Ken had been unsuccessfully trying for the past three hours to remove. Stupid kabuki war paint.

"Alright, let's go over it one more time. Lion face! Grr! Samurai!" Sodom leaned over Ken's shoulder. "GRR!"

"Move no less than three feet away from me right now, or I will bash that stupid mask of yours in."

Sodom obliged his comrade. "So, what have I taught you?"

"You haven't taught me anything. You just chained me to a chair that was sitting in front of a television showing Ruroroni Kenshin episodes for three days. The only thing I learned is that the tingly feeling in your numb hands is only fun for three seconds."

Sodom nodded. "That's a good start."

"You're not even listening to me, are you?"

"Nope."

Ken sighed. "Why aren't you fighting in this tournament, anyway?" Sodom's gaze trailed off, looking at nothing in particular. "Sodom? So-doooommm..."

Every night, the same dream. The same horrifying dream. The same ending, every time.

Those eyes.

Those ghastly piercing eyes. And that smirk. Red...like blood. Clad in the shorn pelts of ferocious carnivores...he looked at me. Right through me. Like a piece of meat.

I still can't go into a McDonald's without crying. Ronald...Ronald must pay. I swear this on my father's grave. I will tell him...I will tell him when I see him...

"My name is Sodom. You disturbed me deeply. Prepare to die."

No...that's no good. Damn.

Ken stared.

Roll adjusted her hair and straightened her blouse. "We're here outside Ken Masters' dressing room, attempting to get a word with the former US Martial Arts champion himself. Let's see if we can get him to say something." She rapped on the door. A very irritated, painted Ken answered.

"What?!"

The small girl robot continued unabated. In the time she’d been working at the Clashdome, this wasn’t close to the strangest thing she’d seen. “We were wondering if you could tell us how you feel going into this match with Dan Hibiki?”

"Dan who?" Ken asked.

"Hibiki," Roll responded.

"Never heard of him."

“Er...but weren’t you both students of Gouken? And weren’t you both in the original Alpha tournaments in your home nodes?”

“Wait, the guy in the fruity pink gi, right?"

"Yeah!"

"Never heard of him."

"Well, he said it must be difficult for you to live in Ryu's shadow, how do you respond to that?"

There was silence. The vein above Ken's eye started throbbing.

"Mr. Masters?"

Sodom poked his head out of the dressing room. "Ken-san! You're on TV! Come on, we've got to traaaaa~in!" He slapped Ken on the thigh, which did nothing to improve the smaller man's temper. Ken snatched the microphone out of Roll's hands.

"Tell that pinko freak that if he can even find his way to the arena, I'll be happy to give him a free facelift." He thrust the microphone back into Roll's hands and slammed the door behind him. Roll was silent for a moment.

“Well, there you have it. Two fighters obviously out to make this a grudge match. This should be very entertaining!” she chimed happily. “I wanted to ask him what was up with that makeup, though. He looked like an evil street mime, honestly.”

“Uh, Roll?” said Blues, “We’re still live.”

“...oh. Well, erm, back to you, Hiro and Dai." Roll twitched her nose.

“Well, it looks like we've got a barnburner of a doozy of a pickle of a brawl here," Hiro intoned into the mike. Dai gawked at him. "Why are you wearing a cowboy hat?"

"Just gettin' ready for the slobberknocker we're gonna witness right here tonight!"

"Oh. What about the sports bra, then?"

"It's comfortable."

“Right, now left down the next corridor, go down one...two...three doors” mumbled Dan as he tried to remember the directions to the telepods. Another two doors went unnoticed as he kept walking to remember the next turn. This inattention to detail was the reason he had gotten lost, and was unfortunately the reason he didn’t notice a familier voice yell “HEY!” before a foot hit him.

Dan was slightly perturbed. He thought he was through taking shots to the head.

“Hey, pinko!”

As the stars began to fade, Dan attempted to focus on the red and yellow blur shouting at him. It was shouting quite loudly, and rudely too. Oh, and the walls were still waving at him. Hi, walls!

“Odd...” said the still confused Dan. “Hey, Kaiza, shouldn’t you be closer to the FFC Arena?”

Ken’s eye twitched again, which was good because his head might have exploded had the pink one mistaken him for Terry Bogard instead. Still, this did not stop him from leaping to the air and kicking Dan in the chest, which sent him falling into the telepod.

As luck would have it, the sudden lack of air in Dan’s lungs didn’t stop him from grabbing the offending ankle and pulling Ken in with him.

*FLASH!*

Elsewhere, in the command booth, a small robot named Yellow (go on, guess what color he is) was plugged into a computer terminal, where it was trying fervently to get an irate German man out of the computer system and locate a hedgehog at the same time. Therefore, it began to feel a tad stressed when the telepod announced it was trying to gene splice two separate bodies while Yellow’s master was out on break.

Yellow immediately sent orders to separate the two and try to send them one-by-one, but disaster struck.

First, one of several small explosions rocked the FFC ring, and the audience along with it. The shock caused the small room containing Yellow to rattle for a mere second, but that was more than enough to spill half a cup of cold coffee onto the small terminal he was perched on. It was at this *exact moment* he found the hedgehog, but the coffee’s interference caused a malfuction which scrambled Yellow’s processor. He began to buzz and whirr spastically as messages were changed, sent, retrieved, deleted, recreated, and scrambled eight ways from Sunday before his eyes were filled with the deadly Blue Screen Gaze of Death, and all was silent. This did the telepod very little good, but luckily for our heroes it got the message to not fuse them together. Unfortunately, however, this particular unit still had a hankerin’ for some splicing, so the two were sent to the battlefield with a few...additions.

There was blackness.

And then there was light. Consciousness slowly worked its way throughout Ken's head as he blinked his eyes, the darkness changing into light. He rubbed his face, to make sure it was still there. It was. He ran his fingers over it once more. The kabuki makeup was still there too. Two blobs came into vision. One spoke, but Ken couldn't see the lips moving.

"You think we should poke him with a stick?"

The other blob rippled. It must have been shaking its head. "Naw, he seems to be getting up. Handsome guy, eh?"

Ken rubbed his eyes and the blobs began to come into focus, began to take on a coherent form. He sat up and looked at the two figures as their faces began to form from the blurs. He gasped in horror.

That's...he's...I'm...they're...

Me?

Ken scrambled to his feet, the headache and blurred vision forgotten for a moment. OK. Assess the situation. You've awakened...somewhere. Surrounded by guys that look identical to you. There's got to be a reasonable explanation. A non-clone explanation. And if you just sort things out in your mind for a second, that explanation will make itself known. So. What is the explanation?

"Hi!" one of them said. "We're your clones!"

Shit. He looked the two "clones" over. Both were dressed in the same gi that he was, both had the same hair, the same eyes...both lacked the kabuki face paint...

"I'm not a clone!" one of them said. Ken wasn't sure who it was, but he assumed it wasn't the one who had said they were clones. "Maybe you are, but I'm not! I'm an original!" Ken named the "non-clone" Ken 3 and the "clone" Ken 2 in order to cut down on confusion.

It didn't help.

"What happened?" Ken 2 was quick with an explanation. "Funny story, really. You see, you and your opponent went through the teleporter together, which would ordinarily result in some sort of weirdass mutation shenanigans like in that movie The Fly. You ever seen that? No? Me neither. Anyway, the Clashdome's systems blue-screened and your bodies were kept separate. For some reason, though, you both got cloned."

"You mean I got cloned," Ken 3 stated flatly.

"...Yes, whatever." Ken 2 whispered into the original Ken's ear. "He's a bit delusional. No big deal, really. Just hasn't accepted his lot in someone else's life yet."

Ken (the original) nodded dumbly. "So...uh...how many clones are there?"

"Well, there's us two," Ken 2 ignored the look of disgust on Ken 3's face, "and...a few others."

"How many others?" "Well, um, er...look over the ridge." Ken ambled across the red, sun-beaten rocks of the ridge they were standing on and gazed down into the valley. Thousands upon thousands of Ken-clones were milling about, sparring, laughing, and doing all the things that clones tend to do. Everywhere, the same red gi and trademark blonde hair could be seen. Ken felt his head start to throb again.

There was blackness.

Then there was more blackness. Brown-blackness, really. A person's hair covering their eyes tends to do that. Said blackness didn't block out the sensations making his body jerk spasmodically every few seconds.

"Wait, he's moving. Stop poking him."

Dan blinked away the slowly receding dots in his vision as he cleared his hair away. He was still in one piece, he was sure of that. But who were these familiar-sounding people around him? Examining the two around him, he gasped in shock at their ruggedly handsome features. Well, one of them anyway, since the other's face was half-covered.

The first was in a pink and white gi with a large "R" on the chest. He seemed to be a bit less concerned about his health, given the stick in his hands. The other, clad in grey armor, yellow scarf, and a pink and red helmet, stood to the side and seemed to be giving the orders.

"Greetings, Dan." said the armored one. "You're probably wondering why we're here. Well,--"

"Where'd you get that scarf!?" interrupted the Saikyo-Ryu warrior.

"Er...that's not important." he answered. "The point is, we are the generals in your army. My name is Protodan, and this is my friend, Rocket Dan." he said, indicating the one who had resumed poking him with the stick.

"Stop that." Dan ordered.

"Yes sir!" said Rocket Dan, standing at attention.

"So..." said the weary teleported one as he stood up, "I have an army now?" he asked as he looked across the seemingly empty field.

"Yes." Protodan answered. "Look behind you." He felt he was somewhat lucky that his helmet had sound dampeners when a resounding "HOLY CRAP!" came from his originator. "I see, you obviously want to know where these clones came from, well--"

"They look so cool!" Original Dan said, oblivious to his robotic double's surprise over how well he was taking things in.

Before the three Dan's, a sea of pink and brown stretched out across the pristene fields. There was laughter, singing, rolling, and more taunting than most could handle. There were robotic Dan's, magical Dan's, alien Dan's, and a few female Dan's that were getting some scary attention from some of the male Dan's. Far too few Dan's had the good sense to look somewhat serious.

"High Commander Dan Original, welcome to Team Dan!" Rocket Dan announced. "and now that you've regained consciousness, you can lead your glorious army into battle! Just one may bring trouble, but together, it shall be...many many times doubled!"

"Battle against what?"

As one, the entirety of Dan variants silenced, turned towards their creator, and spoke in a horrifying war-chant. "Death to the Ken's! Death to the Ken's!"

Original Flavor Dan smiled. This was gonna be fuuuuun...

Somewhere in the middle of the battlefield, a depraved, confused walrus flopped about, carrying a bottle of cod liver oil and a feather duster. But he was less interesting than you think and we're not really concerned with him anyway, so let's ignore that.

In a makeshift tent on an alkali plain overlooking the valley, one of the Kens gave Original Ken an overview of the Dan Army's position.

"All intelligence indicates that they're...uh...over there, somewhere." He gestured in a direction with his hands.

Original Ken grimaced. "You guys haven't put much thought into this, have you?" Briefing Ken shook his head. "We're flying by the seat of the pants, here."

Another Ken ran up to the two other Kens. To differentiate, this new Ken carried binoculars, as he was a scout. "New intelligence...uh, whoever!" he said as he snapped to attention. Briefing Ken acknowledged him. "Whatcha got?"

"We've pinpointed the location of the Dan Army!"

"Well, out with it, man! Where are they?"

"They are somewhere..." he paused dramatically, "...OVER THERE!" he said as he pointed in a random direction. Ken slapped his forehead.

And these people are MY clones?

The War of the Dans, as it came to be called, started abruptly and ended abruptly, as well. It is actually a matter of some historical contention as to why it isn't called the War of the Kens, but let's not get too nit-picky about it. The battle was long and pointless, but was good for a few laughs. What follows is a massively truncated series of the war's events, made necessary by time and space restrictions. Actually, it's pretty much the end of the thing. But it's brought to you as always by Shadowlaw Teeth-Brite Strips. Get that megalomaniac smile for cheap, with Shadowlaw Teeth-Brite Strips!

The taunts streamed across the open air as the Third Batallion of the Ken Army ran for cover. "OYAJI! OYAJI!" the voices screamed in a strange sort of unison. The Dans were incredible in their ferocity and relentless in their taunting. So relentless were they, that they could probably defeat the taunting juggernaut that is the French army any day of the week. Against such a fearsome force, what could the Ken Army hope to accomplish?

"The reports are in, Commander!" This was one of the grunts reporting in to the Original Ken. "We're boned!"

Ken stretched his back and cracked his neck. "I was afraid of that...is there anything we can do?"

"Nope."

"No?"

"Negatory."

"...Well, that blows." Ken slumped down dejectedly. His despondent musings were interrupted by a shout of "EUREKA!" from one of the makeshift tents that comprised the Ken Army's base. The alkali dust was kicked up by a scampering Ken clone's heels as he brought a small box into Original Ken's tent. "Commander! I haff dizcovered a vay to stop ze tauntink!" Ken didn't know why this clone had a German accent. He didn't want to know.

"What is it?"

"Look, mein fuhrer! Zis...is ze Harmonik Reverberizer!" He looked proud of himself. "Eet iz a device used to abzorb ze tauntink frequency from ze Dan Army and rebroadcast eet in a vay that it vill only affect ze Dans, rather zen us!"

"So this will do what, exactly? Make their heads explode?"

"No, eet vill only rebroadcast the tauntink. Ve hope zat ze tauntink vill make them zo cross, zhey vill make a mistake!" Germanic Ken puffed out his chest proudly. "Eet zeems to be a perfectly rational strategy, don't you zink?"

It sounded perfectly bonkers to Ken. But there wasn't another option. "What do we have to do?"

"Ve must place ze Reverberizer en ze center of ze Dan'z kampf!"

"Uh...I'm pretty sure your German's off."

"VAT?! I am inzulted, Commander! Mein German iz perfect!"

"...so all we have to do is put it in the middle of the Dans' camp?"

"Yes, probably."

Ken looked to the sky, lost in thought, the perfect picture of a leader. After a long silence, he spoke words of unending virtue and wisdom.

"Let's do that, then."

We regret to inform you that we lost this portion of the chapter. The basic gist of it is that the Reverberizer was placed in the Dan camp and was successful, rendering the Dans' main weapon useless. Too bad that we couldn't find this part of the story, but if you use your imagination it's probably better than anything we could write here. Imagination is your friend, kids!

"Wow, that worked amazingly well!"

"Did you see how the one Dan was crying?"

"They all were!"

"I thought we were done for when those rhinos charged."

"Thank God we had those satellite-mounted laser cannons, or we'd all be dead!"

It was getting dark all of a sudden, starting to cast a shadow over the land. Ken looked over the horizon as his clones rejoiced at their victory, then started stumbling backwards in shocked horror. Standing in an unearthly glow, illuminated by the fiery red sun of the wasteland, was the biggest Dan he'd ever seen.

"OYAJI!" the voice thundered across the landscape, shaking the ground as it did so. The Ken Army turned around to see where the fearsome voice was coming from. Germanic Ken gasped.

"Ze frequency has turned all ze Dan clones into un gigantic Dan for some reason!"

Ken furrowed his eyebrows. "Some people just don't learn." He clenched his fists, cleared his throat, and...

Sorry to interrupt again, but we have more bad news. The original ending to this chapter was lost somewhere on the ICQ network. Several attempts to find it have been fruitless and we have given up all hope of a true conclusion to this chapter. Instead, enjoy the new ending, assembled hastily and at great expense by an AOL chat room. Courage.

ken: omg megadan u r dead

megadan: wtf oyaji

ken: /me destroys megadan

megadan: *dies*

dan: omg u win ;_;

ken: :D

hiro: ken wins

dai: ok round 2 next brb

We're sorry. Oh God, we're SO sorry...