Darkstalkers 4 Stages Final Part

~ Danza Apatia Destino ~

| Location – False Tears Theatre in Italy.

| Coffin Design – This generic looking wooden coffin is used as both a stage prop and as storage for puppets; the strings used for the puppets can be seen outside the edges, alongside hooks to be attached to wires for lifting them up during plays, and dried blood.

| Characters found here –
- Marionette
- Calliope
- Fowler

| Description – The fight takes place on the main stage of the theatre. This is a rather awkward situation; there are two plays that are scheduled to take place around this exact time, where the battle is. Thankfully this doesn’t seem to bother the audience, probably believing it to be a part of the act, and as a result the owners of the theatre have allowed the fight to take place alongside the plays. For the first few seconds the scarlet red curtains will remain closed and then they will open up to reveal the first story. This tale is about an elderly toymaker and his many grandchildren, who all live happily together. One day however, a former friend of the toymaker, of whom had grown bitter and jealous of his popularity, decided to tempt his grandchildren with candy and money in exchange for ruining their grandfather’s business by causing trouble throughout the town and claiming that he had told them to; six of the grandchildren agreed, with only one boy and one girl refusing. The good-hearted brother and sister tell their grandfather about his former friend’s heinous deeds, and is distraught. The boy decides to take it upon himself to find the other kids and convince them to tell the truth and clear their grandfather’s name. A simple and rather formulaic story, but one that is considered a charming classic, and its many sequels, though mixed in reactions, were also well praised; the lack of any new instalments in the series has brought up much ire in fans. The second story is about a jockey with no last name that seeks only to improve himself and race against the greatest opponents. He enters the world tournament, which consists of horse riders from many different countries, sometimes riders of species other than horses. In between races, the jockey with no last name is confronted by another rider who reveals himself to be the devil in disguise, and has taken an interest in him; he offers to make the jockey the most skilled and famed in the world, in exchange for his ability to feel empathy and sympathy. The jockey with no last name refuses, but is constantly pursued by the devil, and as his experience becomes more and more troubled, he struggles with himself as to whether or not he should take the deal, with only his disciplined training and his best friend keeping him together. Though it and its sequels are one of the most popular stories both on Earth and Makai, there have been constant revisions and re-imaginings of each instalment, making the series infamous in that regard. The audience that cannot be seen will react to different things that happen during the battle; reversals for example will bring forth a collective gasp from the audience. Different events will occur after the fight is over depending on the overall performance of both fighters. If they performed poorly, the audience will throw fruit and bricks and start booing. If they performed moderately, there will be some clapping and a few cheers. If they performed excellently, the audience will cheer loudly and throw roses and occasionally undergarments at the winner. If the battle is finished via an ES or EX attack or when a character has their Dark Force activated, the stage will catch on fire, though the audience reaction will be unchanged.



~ Vanishing Proposal ~

| Location – Andoris Square in Sweden.

| Coffin Design – A regular looking black wooden coffin at first glance until you notice a series of straight glowing lines segmenting it into rectangles and squares.

| Characters found here –
- Octavia
- Kaguya
- Gwendolyn

| Description – The fight takes place in front of a five-star restaurant. On the top level of the restaurant are the presidents and leaders of many different nations who are all dining together as a way to help relations and give suggestions to one another on how to solve their problems. No bulletproof glass, no guards, security or extra precautions of any kind; just them, their spouses and all the ridiculous loads of cash they have on them. The fight will take place at the same height, and this is due to an odd phenomenon that everyone else seems to be ignoring; the grey bricks used to make up the path of the street levitate in the air when anyone is standing on them, and then fall back into place when no one is there. As a result, the fight may appear somewhat confusing due to the lack of a consistent floor, but as long as you know where the fighters are you should be able to comprehend it just fine. The bricks only account for the fighters or any projectiles (or the like) that rely on making contact with the ground to work normally (e.g. a bouncing projectile); otherwise if the projectile would disappear upon contact with the ground anyway then it will pass through the arena floor and onto the street, where it will probably ruin someone’s day. Just above where the president’s table at the restaurant is there is a power line adorned with coloured, dim lights used to make the place stand out at night. It also appears to be somewhat faulty and crackling with electricity, with one end looking frailed to the point where it could be severed any second now; the leaders don’t think it’s that big of an issue, and don’t believe it reduces the quality of the establishment as they believe it was an accident that no one could have controlled. Occasionally a black car filled with many shady looking fellows will come by and lower their windows and take notice of the political dinner; the leaders will also notice them, and will wave and smile to them merrily, after which the car will drive off in a hurry. At some point a young teenager that is incredibly bashful to the point of wearing a black hoodie and a Halloween mask will come up to the table and tentatively give one of the leaders a large, brown box with its contents constantly ticking; the leader will thank the youth and offer to take a photo with them, but before doing so the youth rushes off immediately after giving them the present. As the night goes on, the drinks become more numerous, and another patron at the restaurant characterized by a greasy moustache and an even greasier attire will offer to put a little extra ‘taste’ in the drinks for the group, to which the already intoxicated group agree to; the sleazy stranger will pour a few drops of a dark-purple liquid that viciously bubbles upon contact with the drinks before tipping his ugly fedora and leaving the restaurant. When the fight is over, the leaders will shake hands, pay up, and then leave to go back to their own nations and homes; the present the youth gave to one of the leaders turned out to be a hand-crafted clock, and though it was a bit rusty, the amount of heart and spirit put into it was evident. Those that attended the dinner would then go on to have a successful run in their time as leaders, and their countries do just fine.



~ Yofun ~

| Location – Arahagima Fault Line in Japan.

| Coffin Design – A worn-out wooden coffin that’s wet in certain places and broken in others; a knife can be seen where a person’s heart would be with dried blood around it.

| Characters found here –
- Bernard
- Yukiko
- Iori Yagami

| Description – The fight takes place in the kitchen and dining room area of a small, traditional-style house, though it seems more appropriate to say what is left of the house. From where the fight can be seen, the only area that seems to be mostly intact is the left side, while the wall in the middle has a large chunk taken out of it near the upper centre and only a small part of the right wall remains; the ceiling also has multiple holes in it and doesn’t look too stable, which is very unfortunate due to the heavy rain. Outside the centre wall you can see the grassless hills and mountains far into the distance, and outside of the right side you can see a large cliff side; there is a hole in the cliff side that looks disturbingly similar to an anatomical position depiction of a human being. Appliances such as the stove, the oven and the refrigerator have seen much better days, though it is unknown whether or not the damage is due to stormy weather or from the incident that has happened recently. In the right corner of the room is a middle-aged woman, and in the left corner is her husband; to use the term ‘happily married’ could not be more disgustingly unfitting. Terrible weather conditions, financial issues, awful luck keeping their jobs and concerns for the well-being of their son have slowly made the couple bitter and filled with rage; it only took one more truly awful thing to happen to break them. One fateful day, the couple got into a fierce and heated argument after the husband had accidently crashed his car, furthering the great debt that the family was already in and pushing his wife’s tolerance level over the edge and quickly spiralling into a back and forth of who is a bigger failure as a person. Their son, who was in the room at the time and unnoticed, couldn’t deal with the tension and ran off. After many, many hours of searching the lonesome land, the couple had no choice but to return home as the night grew darker and the storm became more treacherous. Once again an argument broke out, only this time even more furious, to the point where it turned into a fight; the result of which left the already aged and weak house into the state it is now. Now they both just sit in their corners, stewing in eternal hatred and contempt to one another and glaring with eyes filled with something akin to hellfire; the husband holding a kitchen knife, and the wife holding a rusty screwdriver. The only being that holds any value of peace in this house now is the family dog, a young shiba inu. The shiba inu has spent much of its life trying to calm its owners down, and was the only friend to the son. It had tried desperately to warn the parents that their child had ran off, and searched for him all it could; even with its enhanced sense of smell it was unsuccessful, and was deemed a failure by the parents who proceeded to kick it and stop feeding the poor thing. Even after the cruel treatment it has experienced, the dog still wishes to help its owners (even when they really deserve to die) and spends the entirety of the battle following and begging the fighters to help them. When the fight is over, lightning will strike the room through a hole in the ceiling and the couple will finally lose whatever ounce of humanity it had left and attack each other; constantly stabbing each other, and will keep doing so with such rage that they ignore every wound they get, even in areas of the body that would make normal humans crumple. Meanwhile, the rain outside intensifies and floods the area, with copious amounts of water entering the human-shaped hole in the cliff side; a small, lifeless arm can be seen poking out.



~ Monochrome Treasure ~

| Location – Derby’s Toon Metropolis in an unknown area that resembles New York in the late 20’s (presumably inside a television).

| Coffin Design – A steel coffin designed more similarly to a vault, with rust growing over and black, slender limbs leaking out the sides that wave and beckon you to open the coffin.

| Character found here –
- Derby D. Dog

| Description – The fight takes place on the pathway near a park and a road with buildings on the other side. This place has the appearance of an olden-day cartoon; everything seems to be alive and bouncing, and the only actual colour anything could have is red otherwise everything else is black and white. The citizens have wide, toothy smiles and large, black eyes on their faces, and they all walk, stand and generally do everything in strange and silly ways. The humans (?) aren’t the only beings with such faces or mannerisms; animals look and move in ways that would usually be impossible on an anatomical level, and when I mentioned before that everything seems to be alive and bouncing, I meant it literally. Cars have eyes in their headlights, street lights dance, trees whistle a merry tune, signs point to themselves and even the large apartment building makes face with the lights from the windows. After some time, none other than Carlton Carson’s character Derby D. Dog will appear; if Derby is also in the fight, then the other Derby in the background will wave to himself and the Derby in the fight can wave back by taunting. Derby can be seen running away from an angry car overfilled with angry mafia members armed with spiked bats, lead pipes and Tommy guns. After diving into an open manhole the mafia lose sight and drive off, Derby attempts to jump out but accidentally hits his head against the underside of a car and making it jump in the air with shock; the car then blushes and giggles before driving off and shooting out a piece of paper with its phone number from its exhaust pipe, which floats its way into the hand of Derby. Still rubbing his head in pain, Derby disregards the paper, chucks it away and jumps out of the hole and then proceeds to go about his merry way in the city. Whistling a merry tune as he goes past a few buildings, his eyes suddenly pop out of his skull and widen to the same size as dinner plates as he smiles with sheer glee at what he has happened upon: Cuban cigars. Sending forth his left foot to the front of the stand and then reeling in the rest of his abstract body to the destination, Derby leans on the table filled with the cigars (that act as seductive temptresses) on his elbow and flashes a toothy smile at the owner. Though what they are saying cannot be heard, the speech bubbles that appear from their mouths filled with images and symbols can be used to decipher the meaning of their conversation. Derby requests 10 of the owners finest cigars, but when asked for the appropriate payment, the cartoon dog is unsure of how much cash he has and asks the owner to hold on for just a minute. While Derby searches through the infinite void that is his pant pockets, the owner takes a smoke himself and reads up on a notice he had recently been given; his eyes widen in shock as he spits out his cigar. Just as Derby finds a bag with a dollar sign on it, the owner sticks a shotgun in his mouth and reveals himself to be part of the mafia that was after him before. It looks like our protagonist is in a bit of a pickle; how will escape this predicament? Well we will never know now it seems. The tape seems to have become corrupted, and the entire world distorts and then returns back to the beginning of the episode, and the entire process repeats itself. During the fight, any attack such as an ES or an EX attack that successfully hits will be accompanied by a spiked bubble with a word of onomatopoeia inside; although the choice of words can be rather unfitting, bizarre and blatantly made up at times, such as ‘BOWSHEMPF’. When the fight is over, the tape skips to a scene of Derby being chased by the mafia-filled car which has now transformed into some sort of horrific biomechanical abomination that would have surely scarred children for life. Just as it seems that he is done for, Derby has a light bulb appear above his head and smiles before taking out a single pin and poking the monster. A high-pressure stream of blood erupts from the hole as the monster flies off and deflates like a balloon while it sprays its liquid onto the screen in a way that spells out “The End” as Derby appears from a hole is punched through the screen and gives the winner a thumbs up.



~ Despair in Ennui ~

| Location – Restricted containment centre on the Earth’s moon.

| Coffin Design – A plain steel container that has several warnings and signs regarding the nature of its contents and a surface that seems to warp around like some spherical being is moving around inside it.

| Characters found here –
- Vladimir Pavlichenko
- Smith
- Dr. Echidna

| Description – The fight takes place in the bridge linking the two main areas of the centre. The bridge has a glass barrel vault ceiling and most of the walls are made from the same clear yet incredibly tough material, with a few titanium columns that space the wall out into large windows. In spite of the fact that this is a massive facility, it is completely deserted. I suppose I should start by explaining what exactly all of this is. After decades of trouble with wayward darkstalkers, an organization of humans and darkstalkers working together for a common goal: locking away beings that were deemed too powerful, dangerous and out of control for both Earth and Makai. The organization essentially wanted to create a massive prison and asylum, and decided that the best place to build such a place that would be far away from any life forms while also being spacious and having a reduced chance of any sabotage during development. It was ultimately decided that the location would be none other than the dark side of Earth’s moon. After almost two decades in development with the combined effort of Earth’s richest military companies and the power of a few nobles from Makai, it was completed. Though its existence is well known by the entire population of both worlds (there is no feasible way to accomplish such a feat in secret) and subjects that are sent there are reported, documented and available to view by all citizens, everything else is kept at the highest level of confidentiality possible. All authority, all activity and all reports are only for those that work there. The vast security consists of incredibly experienced soldiers who have been conditioned to not let anything get in the way of their jobs. The equipment used to contain subjects is a combination between the most powerful spells that could be cast by a darkstalker with advanced engineering and design. The monitoring system consists of orbs that keep a track on everything within containment cells and the subject’s condition while being virtually undetectable by any sense except touch. In spite of having some of the worst rogue darkstalkers to ever exist kept here, the organization was actually really successful in what they were achieving... but that could only last so long. Looking into some of the reports and documents reveals that keeping darkstalkers locked up was only part of the organizations goal. Right from the start the real intention was to experiment on the subjects and extract their powers, hoping to make powerful bioweapons to sell to the highest classes in Makai in exchange for power; it seems the plans for that are also done for. With all the activity that is meant to take place here, it inevitably raises the question as to why this area is completely empty. No guards, no sound, no alarms, no escaping subjects, nothing; just an empty and clean bridge, as though it had just been built. There’s not really much outside either; the moon and the emptiness of outer space is the same as it has always been. I admit that not even I have an answer to this most curious of phenomenon, but I suppose to dedicated fighters that much is irrelevant anyway. When the fight is over, an indescribable sound can be heard, like that of an ancient deep sea creature using echolocation. A large, invisible sphere that’s presence can only be seen by warping the light of everything around; making anything it comes across look fish-eye lens view of that area will appear and will slowly travel from one side of the screen to another. This explains absolutely nothing.



~ Agonizer ~

| Location – Dohma Castle in Makai.

| Coffin Design – A horrific iron coffin fashioned after an iron maiden, with a woman’s face screaming in pain and crying tears of blood, and gnarled spikes adorning it all around. Is that a hand I see hanging out the edge?

| Characters found here –
- Jedah Dohma
- Shadow
- Sigmund Oppenheimer

| Description – The fight takes place in the middle of a torturing room. This room was once just an ordinary wine cellar, but now he has transformed it into a sadistic dungeon where the primary product is pain and screaming instead of alcohol; this came about after Jedah got bored and a little down after his failure to assimilate all of Makai’s souls. Though the room is very expansive and dark, everything beyond the blood-red candle stands is pure darkness. For where the light does still remain, the only thing you can see is a shallow pool of blood enveloping the floor and several people in horrific torture devices. Watching over and torturing the prisoners are black-robed and hooded servants of Jedah that wear white masks that bear a blood-painted image of a single large eye with a cross over it. Though the entire room is full of them, only three torture devices and their occupants can be seen. To the right side is a Brazen Bull device, which consists of demonic bull with a woeful expression made of brass with a door that can be opened and latched. A person would be stuffed in there and beneath the bull a pot of raging hellfire heated it to scorching levels; their screams are amplified as they go out of the bull’s mouth, making it sound like the sorrowed bellowing of the animal it is shaped after. The victim of this torture was a woman who was once a maid to Jedah that attempted to steal possessions she thought were too small and insignificant for anyone to notice but valuable enough when gathered in large quantities to sell. To the left is an elderly, oni-like man on the Rack, a wooden frame with two ropes fixed to the bottom and two more fixed to the top; these ropes are attached to handles which are rotated stretch out the limbs until they’re dislocated. Also affixed to the man is a Heretics Fork, a device that consists of a metal piece with two opposed bi-pronged forks attached to a belt or strap. One end of the device is pushed under the chin, the other to the sternum, and the strap is used to secure the victim’s neck to the tool; if the man were to have his head droop out of tiredness, the prongs would pierce his throat and chest. The demon that has been given this cruel fate was a working class darkstalker that was against Jedah’s views and believed that he should be overthrown, so he led a large protest group and invaded his garden with constant chants of eliminating the gap between the rich and the poor; Jedah hates people that complain too much. The last one in the middle is by far the worst of them all; the dreaded Iron Maiden. Unlike Earth-made versions of this most heinous of contraptions, the Makai version is much, much worse. The victim, who was a regular aristocrat, is placed inside an iron maiden designed specifically for him; that is to say it is made to perfectly cover his height and width, with his head being place exactly where the head of the maiden is. The face of the iron maiden is not that of a woman but instead of the aristocrat’s face, and contorts into faces of pain and complete despair as he is tortured. The spikes inside aren’t regular spikes either; they have tubes fitted inside them that transfer substances into tubes that go down into a pit below where the iron maiden is suspended above before rising up  back into the back of the device. These spikes pierce specific parts of the body and suck out such things as blood, oxygen, waste and bile that return back to the body after going into a cursed pool of water in the pit that revitalises the substances and makes them perfectly fine to return back to the bodily systems, but also overload the nerve cells with excruciating pain. The end result is the man being physically healthy and fine, but having their psyche utterly destroyed. The aristocrat that bears this most horrible fate was a man that Jedah had crossed paths with in a narrow hall. Jedah was lost in thought thinking up poetry and accidentally bumped into the man, making him sheepishly apologize for his absent-mindedness, and the aristocrat insisted it was ok and they bothed moved on; Jedah doesn’t like people who patronize him and immediately ordered him to be thrown in the dungeon. When the fight is over, Jedah himself will appear from the blood in the room, and in a fit of madness will grab the iron maiden and throw it at the man on the rack, tearing his limbs off and decapitating the servant working it. Then he will throw the servant watching over the iron maiden at the bull, knocking it down and simultaneously bisecting the servant there as well before laughing maniacally and causing the blood to rise in spires. If Jedah was in the fight and is victorious, he will only perform the last part of laughing and raising the blood; if he loses, nothing happens.



~ Complete Nothing ~

| Location – U̜̖̓ͩN͇̩̺̥̟̤̈́̾̍̎̏́K̷ͯͪŅ̺̼̥̝̘̫͕̄ͧ͊̏ͦ̔O̢̱̯̩͙͇W̱̟͓ͭ͆̈́͒̚N̵

| Coffin Design – An object that can only vaguely be interpreted as a coffin due to its shape, seeing how it’s otherwise completely featureless and pitch black.

| Character found here –
- Boogeyman/Nyarlathotep  

| Description – The fight takes place on an invisible flat surface that seems to be the only tangible part of this place. Darkness... so much darkness... you can see them as well can’t you? Those orbs that bring the only light to this forsaken realm? The darkstalkers, the darkhunters and everyone else that have become a part of this series of events, all in those orbs... and those orbs, just like all hopes and dreams, they drift meaninglessly from one end to the other before disintegrating, fading away...... What are we doing? WHY ARE WE HERE?

WE NEED TO G̫̣̬̺ͦͮ̔̌̍E͔͚ͥ̐̑̍ͫT̟̩̦̭͇ͮ̒ ̠͖̯͕̝̪̲ͦO̡̪̞͍͈̻̤̜ͮ͂̄ͤͥ̈Ṵ͎͚͇͓̻̉ͮ̒̓̈̎̒T̸͈̾͑͆ͩ̃͛!

WE D̻̪̳̭͚̔ͫ͑ͦ̒̽͗O̡̻͈̣̊̾̉ͭ͋ͩ̋N̦̙̦̣̹͔͉̘͓͌͌̈ͦͣ͛ͮ̍͢'̬̀ͭ͒ͤ̓ͣ̋ͧT̫̦̥̙͉͐̂̀̒ͯ͟ ̶͓̣̤̳̻ͥͦS̸̩̋̂ͨ̑ͧͤͫ͜Ṭ̙̺ͮ͜͞A̝̪̽̾̇͂ͭͮ̽ͣ̀͠N̝͕͎̪͖̂̈́͆D̶̶͓̲̖͓͇͆͌̋̊͌͜ͅ A Ç̬̟̻̥̦̞͍̘͎̃͆̄͐H̶̹̩̜̤͎̥̩̀͊ͦͫA̧͉̖̞͇̲̻͊̀͊̾ͧ̃ͮ̐͟N̢̍̒͏͇̣̘̯̣́C̥̳͎̳͚ͤͫ̉̌̉̐͝E̞̬͎͈͙͔͇̿͐̑̄̚͟!̴̜̥̃͋͂!

̫͔͓̃͡H̵̲̦̘͓̹̼͎̟͓͈͚̜͎͉͓̮͓ͪͧ̈̌ͫ͑̎̎͐̀̚͘͘͞͞ͅḚ̵̖̪͔̬̓̊̃ͮͣ̈́̑̂̎ͭͮ̃̚̕͡ ̷̭̖͇̖̃ͮ̿̊̆̅͆̌͒͂͌͆ͯ͞͡C̒͐̅̌ͩ͠͏̨̨̥̭̦̝̙̥̯͔̦̟Ȯ̉̈́ͦ̿ͮ̇̂̈͗͆͋ͬ̈́̀̚͢͏̷̝̲̥̩̮͖̫̯͍̪̜͈M̓̅̇̔̐ͧ̾͊ͬ̔ͭͮͩ͋ͦ̆͞͏̷̢̛̰̝̠͚̪͉͕͍̜E͆̌̏̓ͣ͆ͭͯ͛͜͏̡͇͕̝̭͉͉͙͖̖̭̱̦͉͎͈̪̣̟͚͞S̻̤̹͔̪ͥ̿̎̊̀ͨ̍ͭ̈̑ͦ̅͐̍̆̔̀̃ͣ͘̕͜!̴̢̛͍̳̩̲̪̹̞̩̭̼̦̟̟̺̣̲͂͋ͨͩ͌ͧͯ̓̓̎͐̓̊̚͠!̿͊ͭ͋ͣ̓̏̔̽̓҉̨̧͔̗̼̥̺̺̗͚͈̲̪̙̦̱̰̮͝!̸̢̛̛̮̫͎̖̫̝͖̱͎̭̳̝̬̖̯̜̰͊̿͋͒ͭͥ̆ͥͯ́̌͆͘ͅ ͩ͌̊̎̍͒͗̑̈́͑͐ͯ̈́̈́͑͌̔͏̵̣̻̤͙͓̘̯̘͔̻̙͉̞̦͎͚͢͝