Alright, I give up. ^_^ If you recall the posts SKJAM! made on the 29th of
last month, this is a part of that same universe. If the other SMLUFTers
give me majority permission, I'll just release the web address where you
can get the rest of these stories. If you're all interested, of course.

So, you've seen Frey. Now say hello to Midori.


Midori the Prologue: Midori? Isn't That an Alcoholic Drink?
by Mark Doherty (mdoherty@uq.net.au)

The Streetfighter elements are copyright of Capcom, no disrespect is intended.
SMLUFT is a group effort, the other characters are copyright their respective
creators, and some disrepect is intended. ^_^ Midori is mine, so every 
disrespect to myself is fully intended.

Go on, C&C. You know you want to, even if just to ask what this is all
about.

+++++

The Ryu-clone looked around at the devastated plain, frustrated at his
inability to find his quarry.

"'Find the girl' the boss had said. 'Give her my message' he said." the
clone grimaced. "Easy for the boss to say, he didn't have to come here."

He looked around again. He'd travelled to northern Japan, finally arriving 
here. The Hakai Plains were the remnant of irresponsible nearby factory
conditions, the result of illegal chemical dumping. Nothing lived there
anymore, the place was not mentioned, deliberately forgotten by the locals.
Trucks came once a week, dumping various concoctive mixes. Mercury was
probably the least of the poisons buried there.

The trucks didn't come anymore. They hadn't come since four weeks ago, when
the two drivers of that week's load stumbled back to their factory, their
bodies covered in burns, their faces quivering in terror. A scouting party
sent to investigate the missing trucks the men had been driving came running
back. They didn't stop running until they were fifty kilometres away from
Hakai.

Strangely, all the terrified people who had gone to the plains would say were
things like 'mad', 'insane power', and 'squirrel'.

It was all the clone's boss needed, once his contacts found out. He sent
Ryu-clone #13 to offer an invitation.

"Damn Earth nut." #13 muttered as he crunched through the grey-dusted land.
"Where is that..." He paused. He blinked. He looked. He said "A sapling? 
Here?"

True enough, amongst the dead earth, sheltered in the shoulder of a small
hill, was a thriving cherry blossom sapling.

He smiled, a bare crinkle of the mouth. The boss had told him how to draw the 
vic... invitee out if he found something like this. "Oh well!" he shouted. 
"Can't find the person I'm looking for! Guess I'll take all my frustrations 
out on that little tree there!"

He looked around. Nothing. He shrugged, brought his arms forward, and built
up for a chi-blast. "Hado-"

"Stop, tree killer type-person." A lithe girl flipped out of the shadows of
the hill, landing between the sapling and the clone. She was small, about 
3 or 4 inches under five feet. Her hair, dark brown and tangled, with green
streaks dyed through it, hung to her shoulders. The girl, who looked to be
about sixteen or seventeen, was dressed in loose dark brown pants, tied with an
old piece of rope, and an overlarge short-sleeve khaki shirt that was tucked 
tight under the rope belt. Her face and arms were covered in dirt and
grass stains. 

She stared at the clone. She kept staring, her light brown eyes seeming to
glitter. The clone began to wonder if the girl was incapable of blinking.

"Big bully type, you cannot fool me. Clone you are, tell I can. Travesty
of humanity, for threatening an innocent young tree, I cannot forgive you.
For the Great Mother, I shall return you to Gaia's loving embrace."
She smiled, shifting her light grey, cloth-shoed feet into a fighting 
stance. The clone fought the urge to shiver. With that stare of hers,
a smile on her face was very unsettling.

The threatening stance of the girl was slightly marred when, for seemingly 
no reason, with a serious face she uttered "Armadillo-chan, she say you
strange one, no? Whyfor you here?"

He blinked. "Midori Shokubutsu?"

"Really?" The girl asked, blinking at long last. "That my name too. I must
say, it big coincidence that we have same name."

'Just give her the invitation' the boss had said. 'That will be enough to
make her come', he said. 'And bring me back a ham sandwich' he had also said. 
Clone #13 clenched his fists. Screw it, this girl is way too grating on my 
nerves not to go down now.

And so he threw a "Hadoken!" at her. She jumped out of its path, twisting in 
the air.

Midori landed from the jump, and then jumped again to avoid another Hadoken.

The clone grit his teeth. The girl was fast, damn fast. But he had faced...
he winced. His _template_ had faced fast opponents before. All it took was
timing. He gathered the energy in his hands, and threw another chi-ball, 
before he ran forward.

Midori twist-jumped out of the path of the energy attack, her mouth stretched
into a grin. This was fun! Her grin faltered a bit when she saw the clone
had anticipated her jump path, and had set himself in the perfect position
for a flying uppercut from hell.

Fist hit flesh. Flesh hit ground. 

Midori rubbed her jaw as she stood. "Wai wai. That hurt, yes?"

"Yes." the clone whispered, dashing forward.

Midori stopped rubbing her jaw, and flashed her hand into one of those
dimensional pockets that seemed to follow magical girls around like faithful
dogs. She calmly pulled out a leafblower, painted in teeth-rotting magical-girl
pink. She smiled as she pulled the ripcord on the blower's backpack, revving 
up the engine. 

The clone resisted the urge to shake his head as he finally got close enough
to hit her. He had to be sent out after the stupid one, didn't he? Galactic
bounty hunters, bitter martial artists, even the priest would have been 
better than psycho Earth bitch here. He sent out a flurry of punches and
kicks, which the girl blocked with the metallic tube of her leafblower.

"Haha!" the girl cried after clone #13 pulled back. "Feel wrath of elements,
tree-killer! Chaotic Wind!" She pulled the leafblower tube into position,
and flicked a switch. With an appropriate magical-girl twinkle noise, the
blower sprayed out a fierce gust of wind, whipping up the dust of the
barren plain, forcing debris and gunk into the clone's eyes before he could 
cover them.

Midori turned the blower off, and then whapped the man in a few painful places
with the tube, as he tried to rub the dirt out of his watering eyes. After one
final thwap, she tossed the machine back into the dimensional pocket.

The clone groaned, blinking a few times, as his vision restored. "Little girl,
now you're going to--- ahhhhhhh!!!" The man screamed, as the girl had bitten
his arm, latching onto it like a bull mastiff. "Get off! Get off!" He used
his free hand to punch her on the head a few times, until she let go.

Midori spat, then smiled again. "No expect that, eh? When you fight me, you
fight unpredictability of nature."

"Really? Well predict this. Hadoken! Hadoken! Hadoken! Die! Die!" The clone
had finally lost it. If he ever had it in the first place.

Midori sideflipped, twist-jumped, and handsprung her way to safety, as energy
blast after energy blast seared around her. As she dodged, she idly tossed 
around in her mind her next attack, whether to go for a squirrel punch, a 
tiger roll, or a knee to the groin. Currently, she was favouring the knee idea.

She was about to close in, not even thinking about the fireballs the clone
was constantly throwing, when her eyes caught what all the hadokens had
done. One of the stray blasts had smashed into the sapling, smashing it 
into tinder. Her eyes flashed as she looked at the corpse of the young 
tree. She turned back to the clone, snarling, her grin gone.

"Shinku--" Clone #13 said, deciding enough was enough.

"Chained--" Midori growled.

"Hadoken!" A vast stream of energy erupted from the clone's hands,
streaking towards the girl.

"Bulldozer!" She brought her hands down, striking the Earth. The dirt
erupted around her, as dozens of lookalike Midori's sprung out of the
surrounding terrain. The two that sprung out in front of her took the
brunt of the clone's blast, and they crumbled back into the dirt they
were created from. 

The surviving Midori clones surrounded the Ryu-clone, shouting out
slogans like "Hell no we won't go!", "Protect the forest!", and
"Don't dam the valley!"

The Ryu-clone did his best to fight off the Midori clones, slowly but
surely punching, kicking, and Hadokening them into oblivion.

Midori started to glow brightly in a greenish-brown colour, using the 
Ryu-clone's distraction as a chance to summon up one of her finishing 
moves. "Earth..." The glow surrounding her started to seep off into the 
ground, "is a Mother!" The flowing field rushed into the ground, leaving 
Midori drained, but still standing.

The Ryu clone, who had just knocked out the last of Midori's earthen clones, 
had time to turn back to her, before four thin pillars of lava shot up
around him, missing him entirely. He was about to grin, when the ground
beneath him shot up, before a gigantic eruption of lava burst out from
the shaking ground, engulfing him in molten rock as it merged with the four 
far-smaller pillars.

The lava continued to burst out, as the earth crumbled up from the force,
forming a small but violently flowing volcano.

Midori flashed a V-sign to the non-existent crowd, totally ignoring the lava
that was flowing around her, never touching her. "The Earth protects! She just
no protect you!" she cried in victory.

A piece of paper fluttered out of the smoke of the eruption. Midori blinked
(for the second time since the fight had started), before she reached out
and snagged the paper.

She hummed as she read the paper. "SMLUFT!? What with list of fighters? 
The organiser, he the kidnapper of many plants, bad, bad man he is. And 
priest man, the murderer of my sapling grove, he in same place!? Humph, 
must think I crazy, to fall for this obvious trap. I just walk away and--" She 
paused. Her eyes narrowed as she read the last line on the piece of paper, her 
invitation to the tournament. 

"NOT PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER!?" She screamed. "THAT DOES IT! I _SWEAR_
I SHALL BE THERE, ENEMY OF GAIA! YOU RUE DAY YOU TAUNT THIS SERVANT
OF THE EARTH! MY, MY, MY YES! YOU REGRET!"

************  
Mark Doherty  -  mdoherty@uq.net.au
My spam/fanfics are at - 
http://www.tass.org/~mdoherty/index.html

"Time grows short, but I remain tall."