Fist of the Phoenix

A 100% UN-Official Fist of the North Star/Phoenix Point Crossover Fanfic

By Gunlord500

(NOTE: This is posted on both FFn and ArchiveOfOurOwn, but this will probably be my last story on FFn. I love the site, but its interface is just so primitive compared to Ao3. Check me out on there!)

Tom dashed and darted through the mist-shrouded streets of the ruined city as quickly as he possibly could. The clatter of snapping claws and cacophony of alien voices behind him explained his haste. The small brown package he held tightly to his chest explained the import of his flight.

Unfortunately, haste does not breed skill, and as the teenager cut a quick left into a narrow alleyway, hoping to elude his pursuers, he stumbled over a chunk of rubble that had lain unnoticed below the mist, falling flat on his face with a pained grunt. Even as he did, and to his credit, he didn’t lose his cool. Without wasting a moment, he scampered back up to his feet, his hands still protecting that little brown package, so much more important than it looked. But his composure did him little good, because the moment he got up, he saw the bit of debris that had tripped him up was only part of a much bigger problem. The walls of the buildings on both sides of the alley had partially collapsed, forming a wall of debris about twice as tall as he was. He could have scaled it, if he had the time…but he did not.

“Damn it!” Tom swore, and at long last, completely despairing, he turned back to face his pursuers. Hideous combinations of man and crustacean, half a dozen of them were crowding into the alley, chattering at him in ugly, guttural voices that might actually have been some alien language.

At least, that’s what his father had thought, before the things tore him to pieces last night.

“I’m sorry, dad,” Tom muttered, closing his eyes tight. He didn’t want to see those disgusting claws that passed for their hands rip his limbs from his body. All he could do was hope it would be over soon.

And it was…though not in a way he expected.

He heard a loud squeal of tires behind the crabmen, along the street he’d foolishly abandoned for the alley. And then heard a loud voice—a human one.

“HIT THE DECK!”

Operating on pure instinct, he did exactly that. Diving to the ground, he covered his head, and then wished he’d covered his ears as the loud report of a heavy Gauss machinegun roared from behind the monsters. The thick orange carapace that covered their backs could deflect even assault rifle bullets, but not the far more powerful ammunition loaded by heavy weapons, and the boy’s pursuers simply exploded as lances of pale blue light punched through their bodies like paper. Within a moment, the gunfire stopped, and he saw the nightmares who had been about to end his life had now been reduced to steaming piles of purplish mulch.

“What’re you waiting for?!” The voice shouted again. “Get in! More’ll be coming soon!”

Tom was promptly snapped out of his brief reverie, and looked up to see exactly who had saved him. At the entrance to the alleyway, its engine sputtering and groaning, was a small vehicle that looked like a remodeled six-person dune buggy. It probably hadn’t been intended for military use—there was only a frame around the driver’s compartment, leaving the occupants to open air—but the Gauss weapon which had killed the mutants, along with a gunner’s seat and a swiveling pintle, had been welded onto armored plates which covered what would have previously been the two back seats.

In the driver’s compartment there were two people—another youth about Tom’s age dressed in tattered scavenger’s clothing, holding the vehicle’s wheel, and his companion, a young girl clad in the same who looked to be about seven or eight years old.

It was obvious that neither of those two kids were leading anything. That honor was reserved for the man sitting in the gunner’s compartment.

He wasn’t the biggest man Tom had ever seen in his life—one guy from the Disciples of Anu that had once visited his haven had been more than seven feet tall, and this one was only about six feet. But he definitely looked tougher than the Anu fanatic, and indeed, tougher than anyone Tom had ever seen in this hellish world. The arms which calmly, steadily shifted the Gauss gun so its still-smoking barrel was lifted safely into the air were so heavily muscled that the guy looked as if he could deflect bullets with just his biceps. The leather jacket the man wore was open, revealing a chest that was equally well-muscled—except for the strange scars like small craters seared into it, forming what Tom thought looked sort of like the Big Dipper constellation. But despite his fearsome appearance, that man’s eyes also seemed kinder than any Tom had seen before, except for maybe his own father.

And that was why he believed this new savior, instantly and without hesitation, when the man said, “You can come with us. We’ll take you someplace safe.”

-X-

“So what’s your name?”

Tom was so engaged with the scenery outside the front passenger’s seat of his buggy that he didn’t even register the question. They’d left the city—that miserable city—behind them about an hour ago, and it was the first time in months he could recall seeing the sun without the mist hanging overhead. There were still mutant trees and weird-looking corpses strew on the dry, cracked ground, but everything seemed a little less oppressive without that disgusting fog everywhere. But his companion apparently didn’t want him to enjoy the view.

“Hey! You deaf?”

“Huh? Uh, n-no, sorry.”

“Well then, introduce yourself! Sheesh, didn’t anyone teach ya any manners?”

“Sorry, sorry. We’ve just been busy, right? My name’s Thomas…j, just call me Tom. Uh…thanks for saving me. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you guys.”

“Heh heh!” The other boy grinned proudly as he ran one hand through his hair, keeping the other on the wheel of the buggy. “Well, all in a day’s work for me and my friends. Sure wish it paid better, though…money’s no good these days, what I’d really like is some more ammo or gas. Or food! Especially food! You got any on you?” He leered hungrily at the brown package Tom still held to his chest. The way Tom flinched and held it even closer told him that it probably wasn’t edible. “No? Ah, whatever. At least we got a few of those Pandora freaks. Good enough for me. Anyways, my name’s Bat. Nice to meetcha, Tom.”

“Thanks. Same here.”

Bat gestured behind him, where the young girl was sitting and munching on a New Jericho ration stick. She didn’t say anything, but did smile cheerfully at Tom. “That’s Lin. She’s a pretty quiet one. Kinda like Ken.”

“Ken?”

Bat pointed above, where the muscular man was still sitting in the gunner’s turret, keeping an eye out for any creatures that might have been following them. “Kenshiro. Toughest guy out in these wastelands, and I’m his manager! I don’t know where these mutants came from, but none of them can stand up to Ken!”

Tom nodded. “Yeah. He’s definitely pretty good with that machine gun up there.”

“Oh, that? Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Anybody can shoot a gun, but Ken can do a whole lot more.”

“What do you mean?

“You’ll have to see it to believe it. And that might be soon, too. We just about used up the last of our ammo saving you from those things, so the gun’s not that useful now.”

“Oh. S-sorry, I—”

“Nah, don’t sweat it. Like I said, Ken can take care of things. And anyways, we’re gonna stop by a depot soon. There ought to be some ammo along with gas there…at least that’s what we were told.”

As it turned out, Bat was correct about one thing—they’d all have a chance to see what Kenshiro could really do soon enough.

-X-

Night had fallen, and it was another new experience for Tom—seeing his immediate surroundings illuminated by fluorescent light. Back in the city, whenever the sun went down, the lights went off with it—safe as they might have been cooped up in the upper levels of a skyscraper, far above the mist, the leaders of Tom’s haven didn’t want to run the risk of attracting any attention from the monsters, especially if they came up with some flying mutations. But here at this depot, quite a few miles away from the coast, the creatures didn’t seem to have much of a presence.

The depot itself had been a typical gas station before the mist, and before the wars too, and it was one of the few in this region that hadn’t been leveled. Any evidence of its former owner in the form of logos or neon signs had been taken down—the only proof of ownership that now remained, emblazoned on the sides of the fuel canisters and dispensers, were the words “Phoenix Project” daubed in sloppy strokes of paint.

At the moment, Tom was helping Bat, Lin, and Kenshiro load supplies into the buggy. There was no-one else around—it might have been more accurate to call this place a storage area rather than a depot. Inside what had previously been the convenience store, there were was a good bit of extra preserved food, water, medical supplies, and other necessities, though Bat was incensed to find that someone else had taken all the ammo for the heavy machine gun. Apparently, their “Phoenix Project” benefactors didn’t have staff to spare for the depot, so it was used mainly as a staging area, where their vehicles could stock up on fuel and supplies to extend their safe exploration range. It seemed as if another Phoenix team had taken the last of the heavier ordnance, leaving Bat’s little buggy with nothing.

That wouldn’t have been so bad if, as they had expected, they’d left the clutches of the creatures far behind. But it was not to be.

As he was fueling the buggy, Kenshiro sniffed the air and then turned to look at the west, back in the direction from whence they’d come. “We’ll have company soon.”

“W-what?” Bat nearly dropped the box of rations he’d been loading into the buggy’s storage compartment, beneath its mounted gun. “Who’s coming?”

“The monsters.”

“All the way out here? But we’re nowhere near the coast!”

“They must be tracking us.”

“How?! Wait…” Bat turned an accusing eye towards Tom, who shrunk away. “Hey, just what were you runnin’ from, anyways? And what’s in the package you’re carryin’? Are you infected?”

“N-no, I…”

“Bat!” It was Lin who spoke up, the first word Tom had heard from her. She was looking at her friend as angrily as he was looking at Tom, and that was enough to shame him into silence.

“Lin’s right,” Kenshiro said calmly. “I didn’t sense the taint of infection on him.” He looked at the package Tom held, and while his expression was still kind, it was firm. “But Tom, tell us what you’re carrying, and why it’s so important to you.”

“I…okay. I didn’t mean to keep anything from you guys, it’s just…I don’t even understand it myself. My dad just told me it was really important, and I needed to get it to someone, anyone as quick as I could.”

“We understand. Go on.”

“Well…About a week or so, my haven sent a scavenging team out downtown when they ran into some monsters. It shouldn’t have been a problem…just some crabmen, that’s what the survivors told me. But then one of our guys had…like, a seizure or something, and just collapsed. His friends went to check on him, and when they got him up, he turned his guns on ‘em and blew them away!

“He was going crazy, jabbering away in some alien language, and everyone else took cover until someone saw something weird in the window of a building across the street. He shot at it, and the crazy guy dropped like a sack of potatoes, out cold. The rest of the team investigated, and the thing…they hadn’t seen anything like it before. From what they said, it was like a human, but had five heads and four arms. It had been controlling our buddy somehow.”

Tom opened the package he’d been carrying to reveal its contents—a small glass vial containing what seemed to be five pieces of pinkish-grey matter from a human brain. “They took the corpse back and they had our haven’s doctor—my dad—do an autopsy. He took these things out of the creature’s head and couldn’t figure out what they did. He thought they might be how it mind-controlled our soldier, but without a real lab he couldn’t be sure. That’s why he wanted to give them to someone who did. If the mutants have psychic powers now…”

“That’s real bad news for everybody, and we have to figure out how we can stop ‘em,” Bat completed Tom’s thought. “Alright, yeah, I see what you wanted to do. You’re okay in my book, Tom. But what happened to your dad? And your haven?”

Tom looked down, unable to stop his tears from returning. “The…the monsters found us out. Attacked our haven, even though we did everything we could to lay low. My dad…everybody…I…I was the only one who managed to get away.”

Kenshiro walked up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’re living in an era of tragedy. But you got out alive, Tom. The best thing you can do to honor the memory of your father and your friends is to live on and keep on fighting.”

Tom nodded, wiping away his tears. “Yeah. I-I know. That’s just what I’m gonna do. It’s what my dad would’ve wanted.”

Kenshiro then looked at Tom’s vial. “If the creatures really are using psychic powers now, I’d bet those organs also function as psychic beacons. They might be linked to the larger hive mind. That’s how the mutants found your haven, and that’s how they’re tracking us.”

“S-so what do we do?” Bat asked. “Just leave that stuff here and make a getaway?”

“Of course not. Studying those things could lead to a breakthrough in our fight against the invasion. It has to reach the Phoenix Project.”

“But they won’t stop pursuing us until we get to Phoenix Point!”

Kenshiro shrugged his powerful shoulders and then cracked his knuckles—and that seemingly innocuous action told Tom that something very impressive was going to happen very soon. “I’ll just kill them all until there aren’t any left.”

Tom felt someone grabbing his hand—it was Lin, pointing towards the former gas-stop store. She was telling him to get inside to safety—Bat had already done so. He could already faintly hear gurgling noises and angry voices carried by the wind from the west, so he quickly joined his new friends indoors as they crowded around one of the windows to see what would happen next.

Out of the darkness and into the light they shambled, the same kind of monstrous human-crustacean hybrids that had assaulted Tom’s former home, slaughtered his family, and sent him fleeing into the streets before being rescued. Most of the creatures hand pincers on their right arms and huge, heavy shells on their left, but a few had traded the chitin-shields for purplish tumorous appendages ending in a toothed maw that seemed to breath of its own volition—maws Tom had seen spitting out globules of acidic mucous that exploded with the same force as a frag grenade. He had no idea how they’d come so far away from the coast so quickly, but they didn’t seem to be tired at all. There were more of them than there were earlier today—almost thirty, by the looks of it.

The alien mob stopped a few feet in front of Kenshiro, standing motionless before them armed with nothing but his fists. Tom was about to cry out, tell him to run, but then he remembered Bat telling him that Kenshiro didn’t need guns.

The aliens were about to find out why—the hard way.

One of the creatures yelled something in its ugly, unintelligible language, and as one they charged at Kenshiro, aiming to tear him apart. And in the exact same instant, he exploded into motion.

“AAAAAAAAAAA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA!”

Kenshiro was moving far too quickly for Tom to make out anything other than the blur of his upper body and the afterimages of his fists. He was punching so fast, so unimaginably fast, that it seemed there was a hailstorm of knuckles surrounding him, the rapid-fire sounds of their impacts with alien flesh mingling with his loud war cry. And then, almost as quickly as it had began, with a single, “WAAAAH-TAH!” Kenshiro sent one more punch straight at the head of the last crabman who hadn’t been sent flying away by the assault.

It was certainly an impressive display—those crabmen were heavy creatures, and it would have taken incredible strength to make one even stagger with a punch, much less get thrown back a respectable distance. But even so, it wasn’t enough. Tom let out a low “oh, no,” as the creatures got back to their feet, claws snapping in anticipation in anticipation as they prepared for another rush.

This didn’t even faze Kenshiro, not a bit. He was standing as motionless as a statue once again—the only acknowledgement he gave to his enemies were these words:

“You are already dead.”

One of the creatures—a nasty-looking shieldbearers—cocked its head in confusion.

And then its head began to shift and bulge.

It staggered back, screeching and wailing, crashing into one of its fellows, and Tom felt himself growing a little nauseous as the thing’s head expanded—and then burst like an overfilled balloon, spraying its comrades and the immediate surroundings with brain matter.

The other monsters were just as confused as Tom was, and they retreated slightly from the mysterious human warrior. But it was already too late for them.

The night air was filled with the pained shrieks of mutants as they began to explode from the inside. Chitin twisted and cracked as one crabman’s innards explosively escaped from its upper torso. Another fell to the ground squealing as each of its joints burst apart, its misery ended only when its entire torso swelled up and then popped with yet another shower of gore.

One after another, the creatures fell in the same way, destroyed by their own bodies blowing up. After a moment, the screams had stopped, and there was nothing left in the immediate area except reeking piles of bloody alien guts, looking even more savaged than if Kenshiro had blown them away with a battalion’s worth of machinegun rounds.

“W…what the hell happened?” stammered Tom, somewhat shell-shocked by the sight.

“Heh heh! That’s what they all say when they see Hokuto Shinken for the first time,” Bat gloated. “That’s Kenshiro’s special martial art, and he’s the only one in the whole world who can use it. I’m not too sure how it works, but the human body has a lot of special energy or pressure points inside it. If you hit those points just right, you can control someone else’s body, or even make ‘em explode! Since most of those monsters used to be human, it still works on ‘em, and, well, you can see the effects.”

There wasn’t much time to take in that explanation, because the monsters weren’t done yet. A loud burst of machinegun fire erupted from the darkness—Tom recognized the sound, for he’d heard a lot of it when his haven fell. Those were the guns carried by some of the other types of crabmen—primitive, ill-maintained pre-war machineguns that could still hit very hard indeed.

But to Kenshiro, they might as well have been pea-shooters. With another loud “WA-TAAAH!” he leapt high into the air as the bullets carved gouges into the empty ground—and Bat let out an audible sigh of relief when he saw none had hit the gas tanks. Meanwhile, Kenshiro twisted his body as he flew, dodging another bust of fire from the aliens, and landed directly in front of the small squad the creatures had apparently sent as ranged backup—more crabmen who looked just like their fellows, except with tentacles clutching old, rusty machineguns rather than pincers.

Before any of them could react, Kenshiro unleashed another flurry of fists, and just like their melee comrades, the gunners exploded from within, their viscera pooling around Kenshiro’s boots.

With that, the aliens played their last card.

Again did Kenshiro leap backwards through the air, landing back in front of the APC, because the ground beneath his feet had begun to buckle and crack. With an ear-splitting roar, something emerged from the parched wasteland earth—something very big, very loud, and very, very angry.

It was the biggest mutant Tom had ever seen, shaped like a cross between a spider, a woman, and a praying mantis, combined into one monstrosity considerably larger than a main battle tank. It stood on six armored legs, atop which sat a small, human-like torso between two gigantic, spike-covered pincers. Behind that was a dull-blue colored thorax that flared out, almost like the wing-covers of a beetle. That thorax was covered in heavy, rocklike armor—as were the creature’s pincers, its legs, its torso, and most notably the head atop that torso, which looked almost like a demonic version of a medieval knight’s—a “helmet” with a large armored crest that spread horizontally from its forehead, beneath which was laid an impossibly wide mouth laden with far too many knife-like teeth.

Despite the size and horror of this new adversary, Kenshiro didn’t flinch. “Haven’t you scum had enough?” he asked, though he didn’t really care about the answer. This time, he charged at the creature, jumping towards her head. He landed right in front of her, but only after his after-images had disappeared, providing the only evidence that he’d unleashed another hundred-punch flurry all over the creature’s vaguely human torso.

A second passed, and then another. Tom thought—and desperately hoped—that what happened to the smaller aliens would also happen to the massive Armored Queen, but this time his prayers would not be answered.

With what could have been a gurgling, contemptuous laugh, the Armored Queen batted Kenshiro away with one of its mighty claws, sending him crashing straight through one of the walls of the depot.

“KEN! KEN!” Bat, Lin, and Tom immediately rushed to the side of their fallen hero, who lay motionless. “Aw, damn, this isn’t good,” said Bat through gritted teeth, as the pounding claw-steps of the giant monster thundered closer. “Tom, take your package and run!”

“M-me?!”

“I think she wants what you’re carrying, and you distract her. MOVE!”

“Okay!” Following Bat’s instructions, Tom darted away to the back door of the depot, then through it and off to the building’s side. Just before the Queen crashed into it, burying Kenshiro, Bat, and Lin under a pile of rubble, Tom held up his father’s vial. “Hey! Looking for this!”

The creature was, and she halted her assault on Kenshiro and his friends to turn towards Tom. He rapidly regretted his bravery, as she started stomping towards him, and despite her ponderous bulk, she was much faster than he was.

“Shiiiiit!” Tom cried as he stumbled over himself, one of the Queen’s huge pincers crashing into the soil directly behind him. He cradled the vial, protecting it from damage during the fall, but couldn’t keep his feet. After he tumbled to the ground, he could only turn over on his back, watching helplessly as the Queen loomed over him.

But just as she was about to skewer him for good, another voice rang out from behind her.

“Leave him alone, ugly! Your fight is with me!”

Kenshiro had gotten back up, standing tall and proud with Bat and Lin huddling behind him. His face and arms were scratched and bruised, and he spat a bit of blood on the ground in irritation, but otherwise he seemed remarkably hale and healthy for someone who had just been smashed through a wall.

Its attention drawn once again from Tom and his precious vial—perhaps she believed she’d be able to hunt down the boy easily enough after his friends were dispatched—the Queen headed back to Kenshiro, intent on finishing the job she’d started.

“Heavy armor, huh?” the martial artist muttered, straightening his stance and lifting his arms in preparation for another attack. “That won’t be enough to save you, crabface. Hokuto Shinken has been passed down for three thousand years, and no star-spawned horror can ever defeat it!”

Kenshiro’s muscles tightened and bulged as he let out a scream of primal rage. He was removing the last of his restrictions on his own power, and his jacket tore into a thousand pieces and disappeared into the wind as his biceps and chest muscles flexed and expanded. The Queen roared in defiance, and Kenshiro let out his own warcry as he leapt once again to meet her charge.

“AAAAAAAA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-TA-WAAAAAA-TAAAAAH!”

This time, however, Kenshiro didn’t shower her in punches—instead, as he descended, he let loose with a lighting-fast flurry of kicks. And this time, the Queen couldn’t ignore them. The force of Kenshiro’s feet caused her to stagger back, flailing her pincers in confusion as Kenshiro calmly landed in front of her.

“That was the Hokuto Juuha Zan special technique,” Kenshiro stated. “The shockwaves generated by my kicks on your armor have passed through your body and activated your pressure points.”

He turned away. “Just like your underlings…you’re already dead.”

The Queen let out a shrill, earth-shaking scream so loud that Tom had to set his vial on the ground and cover his ears. She took a step back, and her inhuman voice went silent when her human chest heaved and swelled, sending chunks of its armor flying away. The same happened to her thorax, and one of its wingcover-like extensions fell away from her body along with a torrent of blood as her flesh began to churn and boil. She collapsed to the ground, just as her head, pincers, and legs went boom, sending a geyser of blood and guts into the air that soon turned into a rain. Kenshiro had picked up one of the crabmen’s shields from off the ground and used it as an impromptu umbrella for himself, Lin, and Bat, but Tom wasn’t so lucky.

As the three of them walked over to their brave new companion, Kenshiro couldn’t help but smile as Bat and Lin giggled. “You did a good job, Tom. We’ll get you cleaned up at Phoenix Point.”

He accepted Kenshiro’s proffered and got back to his feet, using his jacket to clean a bit of the gore off the preservation vial as Kenshiro continued to provide instructions. “We can’t afford to waste any more time, we need to get that material to the scientists as quick as we can. Bat, finish fueling up the car. Lin and Tom, you two get in the back and get some sleep. I’ll drive us the rest of the way there.”

Sleep? The word alone reminded Tom that he hadn’t gotten a wink since his father died. And after everything that followed, he could use a lot of it. No sooner had he plopped himself in the back seat of the buggy did he doze off and start snoring.

The nightmares weren’t as bad as he expected. There was a lot of blood, and very many aliens, but in the midst of all the blood and violence, Tom also dreamed of something he never thought he’d feel again.

Hope.

Fist of the North Star (Tetsuo Hara) and Phoenix Point (Julian Gollop and Snapshot Games, sometime in 2019)