"Hey, hey, HEY!" a somewhat unwelcome voice rang out over the ClashDome. "Iiiiit's ME! BJ Nash is back by the request of a certain party interested in the results of this particular bout!! I'll be announcing this fighting extravaganza!!"

A few groans were drowned out by BJ's roaring on the loudspeakers. "Annnd let's get the only match of the final bracket of this round *STARTED!* Entering first, wearing white and grey, weighing in at one hundred and thirty-five pounds... *SAKURA YUGURE!*"

As energetic music played over the speakers, Sakura jogged her way to the ring, surprising those who knew her by climbing the steps rather than leaping into the ring and behaving more somberly than usual.

"Wow, looks like she's got something on her mind, folks!" BJ Nash enthused. "Buut moving right along so I don't get jumped by *STRANGE NINJAS IN RED,* Here's the second competitor... DEMITRI MAXIMOFF!"

Eerie baroque music played as the entire arena crowd leaned forward in anticipation of the arrival of the Lord of Vampires. A small bat, unnoticed by many, flew down from the rafters and morphed into the imposing form of Demitri Maximoff, sovereign of Sithicus.

Powerfully built and dressed in Romanian finery, Demitri towered over his opponent. Those unfamiliar with the warriors would have decried the match as unfair; a schoolgirl against an ages-old vampire. However, those in the know realised that this was a match worth watching. Sakura Yugure had proved herself more than a match for beings far more established than herself. Though young by the standards of the Darkstalkers, she was already as powerful as most of the nobles as befit one of her Royal station.

A chill wind appeared from nowhere, allowing Demitri's cape to billow majestically behind him and for Sakura's skirt to flap slightly upward, to the delight of hentais in the crowd.

Facing his sister-in-law in battle for the first time, Demitri was not concerned for her safety. Normally, he had to rein in his power somewhat lest he cause undue harm to his opponents. With the youngest scion of the Aenslands however, there was no such need for he suspected that she could absorb all of the punishment he could deal and then some. Before they could come to blows however, there was the obligatory pre-match posturing.

"Have you any idea what you had unleashed when you 'cured' your friends?" Demitri asked in a reasonable tone; as if curing vampirism was something done every day. "What ever possessed you to turn to *Holy Magic* to seek redress? It was most fortunate that the magic healed them rather than reduced them to ash on the spot! Worse still, you used Holy Magic in the confines of Castle Aensland itself! Be glad that the Castle did not choose to remove the blight of Holy Magic by simply collapsing on your heads! If you were not an Aensland by adoption, the Castle would have probably swallowed the lot of you whole."

"I've got some complaints for you too, Brother-in-law," Sakura shot back. "Leaving aside the issue of Holy magic - which I *wouldn't* have risked if I hadn't had information from beyond time that said it would work as intended - *You* were sure they were happy in your service. They weren't... not in their souls, in their heart of hearts. The fact that you were wrong about them means that, from my point of view, you have some fundamental assumptions to question... both because of the fact that you were wrong about their happiness, *and* about there being no way to reverse their vampirism. Make sure you give it some consideration, OK?" she finished with a gimlet stare.

Demitri sighed. "I hope you learn from your rashness, foundling. I understand that the recipients of your cure were less than grateful. So it is with us and the warriors of the Light, they seek to do us harm even if we menace them not. Our very existence is a travesty to them whether we intend bane or boon. Light without Darkness only breeds blindness."

Sakura bit her lip, but sallied back bravely enough. "I don't think they'd have reacted that way if they hadn't been paranoid about what had happened to them. Kyodai (Brother-in-law), they were miserable in their souls but trapped in both body and mind... who *wouldn't* be paranoid about that, having gone through it?"

Demitri held up his hand to forestall further arguments. "Enough, my Queen and I spoke on a means to teach you the value of humility. I believe that she has already arranged something in Makai."

As the world around them warped into a phantasmorgia that indicated their travel to Makai, Sakura had just enough time for an eloquent "eep!" before she was standing in a ring.

A ring surrounded by hordes of slavering, rapacious succubi and incubi.

Back in the ClashDome, BJ had time to say, "WOW-" before he was interrupted.

"I believe you could announce more effectively on-site, yes?" Morrigan asked, appearing behind him and wrapping an arm around him, then transiting them both to Makai in turn.

The Aensland queen and the announcer warped into a plain below Castle Aensland in Nocturne, onto a raised announcer's podium before a square raised platform, around which were crowds of ravenous-seeming bat-winged humanoids of gorgeous appearance and in the middle of which were the two fighters. Seeing a microphone in front of him, BJ wasted no time. "HEY! Hello from the Demon Realm!" he yelled into the mike. "Can you hear me? Am I still on, ClashDome!?" he asked as he snatched up a set of earphones also provided.

"Yeah, you're still on here and reception is fine... don't ask me how," came the voice of Iczel_prime, one of the tournament organizers. "You have a clue, Race?"

"I'm not sure... I think Morrigan's hacked the DimensionCam array somehow..." came the voice of the ClashDome's owner (and the current tournament host,) Racewing.

"Weeeellll, as long as I'm announcing I DON'T CARE!" BJ yelled. "And here I'm safe from wierd red ninja guys!"

"He is *so* dead when he gets back here," a quiet voice said in the background. "I'm still not sure why we let him do this match..."

An exasperated female voice answered him. "Because Morrigan Aensland came up and asked you to and you could only nod 'yes' and drool, Guy!"

"I wasn't asking you, Chun-Li."

Hearing the exchange over his earphones, BJ sweatdropped. "Uh, getting back to the match, the fighters appear to be on a raised platform amid a crowd!" the bombastic one said. "What could the lovely Aensland Queen have in mind...? Oh, thank you," he paused as a flunky in Aensland colours reached up to the podium and handed him several sheets of paper. "HEY! It's the match rules!! Okaaay! Let's see here! It says that this is a battle to ring out! Lethal moves are forbidden! The first one to hit the ground outside the ring is the loser!! Simple but elegant, I lllllove it!"

On the twenty-meter square platform, Sakura was considerably less calm about it. "Incubi..." she began, and Demitri followed up.

"... and succubi?" he asked, one eyebrow raised. "My darling wife did not mention *this.*"

"...and they look half-starved..." Sakura commented with a HUGE sweatdrop. "Hey! Oneechan! How come they're not attacking each other!?" she yelled to Morrigan, who was just taking a seat in the second chair on the announcer's podium - this one resembling a throne.

Without noticing it, Sakura and Demitri had gone back-to-back, keeping a wary eye on the slavering horde regarding them as a crowd of starving people might look at a ten-course banquet held just out of reach.

Morrigan smiled lazily. "Oh, there's a spell keeping them from attacking anyone except those who fall in. And to keep them from climbing or flying onto the podium, so as long as you're on the platform, you're safe..." she finished with an evil grin.

Sakura gulped loudly. "If we fall in there..."

"Either one of us would be drained into immobility in seconds," Demitri commented, much calmer about it than Sakura was.

"We daren't even go near the edge! They'd grab whoever did!" Sakura cried out, then as if by agreement or choreography, the two fighters turned to face each other, and the gaze they exchanged conveyed one clear message, whether the gazer was outwardly half-panicked or calm.

~It's not going to be *me!*~

"And an intense staredown after the competitors have gotten the rules and consequences clear, folks..." BJ said, quiet for once as the atmosphere of anticipation was clear even to him.

And then it began.

The two combatants each took one step back, then lashed out with strong right hands. The close range of the start made the preferred fireball match-openers of both fighters redundant, and they traded blows with rapidly increasing speed and ferocity.

This was not, however, a brawl to a knockout, but a battle of position; a game of chess in which Demitri was already thinking several moves ahead. As Sakura blocked a right cross and reared back to reply with a side kick, she found her foot passing through thin air as Demitri vanished - but for less than a second, as he appeared already uncoiling in an upward spin.

"Demon Cradle!"

Struck squarely, Sakura arched upwards and back, a mad cheer from below alerting her that she'd crossed the ring perimeter while flying. {Damn! I have to think, not just react, or Demitri'll have me for breakfast... or rather the incubi will,} she thought, then tossed a mocking wave to the sex-starved males sprinting away from the ring edge to stay beneath her. "Sorry boys, no snacks yet!" she cried out, spinning as she thrust her leg outwards.

"Shun-pu-kyaku!" she cried out, invoking her version of the Hurricane Kick and its ability to both slow falls and alter her trajectory in midair.

Helicopter-like, she twirled to a landing a good five meters from the platform edge and another five from Demitri. "Good try, but it's not over *that* easily," she grinned. "Come on, show me more!"

"As you wish. Chaos Flare!" Demitri replied, flinging his bat-shaped fireball at her... and widening her grin.

"Gotcha!" she cried gleefully, hopping a foot into the air. Calling up the energy within her, Sakura unleashed it into a wave of power in front of her, one that not only dragged her forward through the air, but blasted the Chaos Flare into nonexistence in passing.

"Sho-Oh-Ken!"

The gliding uppercut sent Demitri skywards, and Sakura watched warily as he, too, followed a path that took him past the ring edge. {It *can't* be that easy,} she thought pessimistically... and was proved right a moment later.

Demitri halted his tumble in midair, seeming almost dignified, and gathered his cape around him like a drill as he invoked the Bat Spin, not only drilling back into the ring area but forcing Sakura to block... and then they were off again, trading blows and parries with abandon.

Sakura had to gasp when, a minute later, Demitri transformed as he blocked her quick punch combination. Assuming a form Sakura had only seen in her dream vision of the battle with Moloch Aensland, Demitri's face and body became dark and demonic while his cape became wings and his hair bat's ears.

In her surprise, she left her hand extended a moment too long, and Demitri grabbed it and soared into the air, gathering her closer and plummeting them both headfirst towards the ground in a version of Morrigan's Vector Drain throw.

By the time she realized that their landing point meant the impact would bounce her outside of the ring, she had only a second to react. Summoning up the Satsu flames, she wreathed her body in them, causing Demitri to loosen his grip as he was suddenly bearhugging someone who was, for all intents and purposes, on fire. Spinning sideways, Sakura pushed off with both hands and kicked out with both feet, flipping herself free of the grip and dashing away from her foe as he reverted to his handsome human appearance.

{That's it - I'm going to finish this before anything *else* happens,} she thought. Gathering her energy to herself, Sakura prepared to humble her opponent with one of her oldest raw displays of power. She was about to cry out her Shinkuu Hadoken attack phrase as a prelude to unleashing the roiling energy inside of her when Demitri morphed back into his bad-ass bat-demon form. Committed to the manoeuvre, Sakura had no chance to block as Demitri used *his* special, becoming a swarm of flaming bats and coming at her in a flurry.

"DEMON'S HORDE!"

Staggered and dizzy from the horrific pounding, Sakura stumbled right into Demitri's uppercut. Dazed, her first clue to her potential danger was when Demitri lifted her bodily off her feet. Reacting by instinct, Sakura transformed into her Aensland form and buffeted Demitri with her wings until he lost his grip. In putting some distance between her and the vampire, Sakura used her wings to propel herself backwards. As the ringing in her head began to dim, she realised something very important. She was hovering *outside* of the ring... and too low for comfort!

With a frenzied cry, the incubi in the thong of sex-fiends jumped up at Sakura and tried to drag her into their clutches. Already flying at a low altitude, Sakura began to sink slowly towards the awaiting horde as more and more incubi piled on top of her. She could already feel their hands exploring her nubile flesh in an attempt to lower her resistance to the point where they *all* could slake their lusts on her body.

Suddenly, she felt the pressure on her disappear and strong arms cradled her endorphin-saturated form back into the ring. As awareness of her situation returned to her, Sakura found herself in the arms of her erstwhile opponent while the incubi throng howled bloody murder. Rage replaced reason the moment Sakura realised that Demitri had just saved her from certain defeat.

An action that had just spit upon her pride as a martial artist.

Pushing off, she stepped down to the ground with the quiet comment, "You deliberately saved me..."

Demitri had time to nod before Sakura's calm was revealed as the kind that comes before the storm. "You *JERK!*" she screamed, belting him with an uppercut that sent him halfway across the ring in a marvelous display of ingratitude.

The Maximoff monarch had barely bounced before Sakura phased in beside him, courtesy of the Ashura Warp. "Are you *trying* to make a joke of me!?" she screamed, lashing out with a side-kick that sent him back the way he had come, then pursued him with a running Sho-Oh-Ken, not even bothering with the *chi* wave.

"Do you think you're so superior to me that you can act like an Earth pro-wrestler, pulling his opponent out of a pinfall just to show contempt!?" she screamed up as the uppercut sent him skyward, then leaped after him.

The brief pause gave him the time to recover, and he was upright and waiting by the time she was at his altitude, and they traded blows and blocks as they fell towards the center of the ring.

"I had my reasons," he replied, counter-kicking her thrust at his ankle and blocking her high kick at his chin.

"I hope you're ready to lose for them, then," Sakura pointed out... and threw a double-handed axhandle punch that nearly turned her over in midair.

It caught the vampire lord as he was trying to mount an offensive of his own, and sent him tumbling down even as it bounced Sakura upwards. {Come on, come on, I know you're going to try to kick away from that, there's a fifty-fifty chance you'll land outside the ring if you don't...} she thought, charging up power between her hands.

For a moment, it seemed as if Demitri was going to take that chance, but then his cape swirled about him as he tried for a Bat Spin at the last possible moment, having put as much distance as he could between him and his opponent.

{Not far enough, Kyodai,} Sakura smirked to herself, and let the power go.

"Hadoken!!"

The downward-angled fireball caught Demitri just as he was touching down.

For a moment, he struggled to retain his balance... and then one of the succubi grabbed his ankle and yanked, and there was a surge in the crowd as Demitri vanished beneath them.

As the throng moved in on Demitri's landing point, Morrigan turned to BJ Nash, who was drooling slightly and trying to control a nosebleed as he watched the succubi converge.

"Well, that would seem to be it... *Yes?*" she noted, snapping BJ back to attention.

"Um, yup! Yeah! Sure does! ...wow." BJ said. "Dark Sakura is the winner!!" he yelled, waving to the girl, who was *precisely* in the middle of the platform, keeping a nervous eye on the incubi still around the edge.

It was a mark of how unsettled she was that she didn't protest the 'Dark Sakura' monicker.

Then BJ yelled again as Morrigan picked him up by the scruff of the neck. "Hey, hey, HEY!! What's going on here!?" he protested.

"Well, those succubi have been starved for a day or two," Morrigan replied casually, "And I don't think even *my* Glamour would get them off a specimen like my husband." She glanced at the dangling announcer. "Not without a distraction, anyway."

And with that, she threw BJ into the succubus throng. As many of them turned to the new source of sustenance (less than choice, but you took what you could get) Morrigan unleashed her Glamour, sending the females nearest Demitri's now-limp form into kneeling bows, and scooped up her husband. "I *was* hoping I'd get you, sister, but your luck has held," Morrigan said, then flew off.

"I am *so* out of here!" Sakura didn't even wait for the ClashDome teleporter, Ashura Warping out of there as fast as she could.

As Demitri returned to consciousness under the tender ministrations of his wife, Morrigan sighed at her husband's antics. He had technically won the match only to have rescued his opponent from the jaws of defeat. Sometimes, she really could not understand his arcane reasoning. "Dear," asked Morrigan as she placed a damp towel on Demitri's forehead. "Why did you pull Sakura out from the hordes of incubi? Surely it was not some outdated ideal that females are inherently weaker than males?" A cold edge in her voice promised horrible slaughter (and lots of nights on the couch) for Demitri if this was so.

Demitri thought for a second, trying to frame his answer in a manner that would best placate his queen. "Sakura Yugure is a citizen of Makai. I could guarantee that I could survive the succubi but I could make no assurances about your sister. I could not allow her to come to harm for any citizen of Makai, from its highest noble to its lowest slave, is under *my* protection and would never come to grief if it were within my power to prevent it."