If someone is born a male,
At least once in his life he’ll dream
Of becoming the strongest man alive.
Grappler, the martial artist who aims to become the strongest in the world!
Having only a month to get strong enough to defeat his father in combat, Baki wonders what he could do in order to get stronger in such a short period of time. General Strydum suggested something peculiar.
“You know… there’s talk about a stranded spaceship sending distress signals, but no one dares to go and investigate. The USG Ishimura.”
“The USG Ishimura?”
“Yes. It was a ship designed for medical research and deep space expeditions. I believe they used the ship for some sort of planetary mining, but the company has always been incredibly secretive about their true motives. There are rumours about something terrible happening to the crew, as well as the small team of engineers sent to fix what was supposedly a simple malfunction. They never came back either.”
“It sounds terrible, but I don’t understand how this could help me get stronger.”
“Well Baki, they say that the reason the ship became stranded and why no one has been able to communicate with it is because of supposed… creatures… in the ship. Horrific monsters who apparently eat people, or turn them into one of… them.
Additionally, even if there are no monsters, the low gravity of space and having to use a special suit to get around the ship and manage your oxygen should be a nice change of pace.”
“I see… if there really are monsters aboard this ship… I’ll take them all out!”
When Baki arrived at the terrestrial base for the Concordance Extraction Corporation (or CEC, for short) he was met with the typical scepticism that accompanied him whenever he would go on any perilous journeys such as this.
“There is no way we can let a boy of thirteen go on such a dangerous mission. We don’t even know what’s going on in the ship. We could lose contact with him as well, or fall victim to the potential mutiny or criminals or whoever is lurking in the Ishimura at this point…”
“You mean the space monsters?” Baki replied with an irritated tone.
The overseeing officer in charge of organising rescue efforts flinched, his eyes widening, “Eh… there are no monsters on that ship! That’s just a stupid rumour! What most likely happened is that a mutiny broke out or some space bandits have taken over the ship…”
“Let him go” said General Strydum “As you can see by the amount of muscle he has, he is no ordinary boy”
The officer looked at Baki again and nodded “Well yes, he is no ordinary boy, but…”
“I should also mention” interrupted General Strydum “That this is the son of the ogre”.
“Y-you can’t mean…!”
“Yes. Yujiro Hanma.”
The officer nervously swallowed, and then looked at Baki again “Well, if he’s really Yujiro Hanma’s son, then I suppose that maybe he’ll be able to survive against whateve- err I mean whoever is there”.
The officer motioned for Baki and General Strydum to follow him while he talked “Your mission is simple on paper. Land on the ship, locate and rescue any survivors if there are any, and take out any invaders or anyone getting in your way. You will be provided with a standard space astronaut rig. Getting there will be complicated since we can’t establish communications in order to get landing clearance on the ship, but in terms of actually controlling the small spacecraft we’ll provide for you, it is self-driving, so you don’t have to worry about learning how to use it”.
The officer stopped right next to the smallest ship in the docking station and turned to it, tapping its roof like a used car salesman would.
“It doesn’t look like much, but it’s fast and will get you to the location of the ship in just 3 days. There’s enough food to last a week in there if you portion it right. Sorry we’re not really going over protocol and controls, but we really have no time. If you really think you can do this kid… then get in.”
Baki nods and gets in the ship. He looks to General Strydum and salutes him before the officer begins to close the door to the ship. Strydum returns the gesture.
That would be the last human interaction he would have for some time.
Three days later, in the cold depths of space, Baki was hovering over what was supposedly the stranded USG Ishimura.
“There it is”, a voice said from the intercom “As you can see, all lights are off. The only sign that anyone was there at some point is the distress signal we received. Not sure how you’re going to manage to land but oh… look there! The landing dock entrance is open! That’s convenient.”
Baki looked to the entrance, a somehow blacker abyss than the dead of space.
“Alright, let me re-route your ship to land… good luck.”
Baki sat tight as the ship landed with mechanical precision. Once inside, the sound of the engines echoed every loudly against the walls, before automatically turning off to reveal…
Absolute silence.
Even if all lights on the ship were off, that’s not what Baki was expecting. This was a large ship with a sizeable colony. Even if there were criminals or a mutiny around, surely you would hear the sound of those. No sound or lights at all makes it look like everyone just disappeared. The question is how?
Baki put on the standard space astronaut rig and pressed the button to open the ship’s door. The loud hiss that it made being a stark contrast to the silent landing docks.
When Baki stepped out, he realised that things were far more sinister than what they told him. The ship wasn’t simply left empty… something terrible happened here. Baki turned on the flashlight installed in his suit in order to see better. The walls were covered in red graffiti…
Is that blood?
“Help us”, one of them said, others were written in glyphs of a language Baki had never seen. As he walked away from the landing bay and further into the ship and into a corridor that led to what seemed to be some type of control room, he saw almost every surface covered in this writing. Before he could even begin to think of what to make of the writings though, he heard a noise from above him, as if something was slamming on metal.
It’s in the ceiling he thought, something is crawling inside the vents.
Baki readied his fighting stance. Something told him that it wasn’t a mutineer…
Suddenly…
Nothing.
And then nothing.
And then more nothing.
It was as if whatever was in there could sense that Baki had noticed them.
The world stood still. If it wasn’t for the sound of his heartbeat thumping in his ears, he would’ve sworn that time itself had stopped.
The loud static sound coming from his suit made him jump back.
“H- ello? –nyone –here?”
The voice from the radio was cutting out and hard to understand, but it sounded like a woman’s voice.
That’s right. All of these suits come with a radio installed for ease of communication… they told me that due to the distance the people back at base wouldn’t be able to communicate with me so the radio wouldn’t be much use… is this somebody on the ship with me…?
“Hello? Who are you?”
“My -ame is –endra Danie—”
“I can’t really make out what you’re saying, the signal’s cutting out!”
“—ang on…”
The sound of static reappeared for a few seconds before the voice of the woman returned, this time much clearer.
“My name is Kendra Daniels. I was part of the USG Kellion crew sent to a maintenance mission to the Ishimura… please help us… oh God… I can’t die to those… things”.
“Is there anybody else with you? And how are you talking to me right now? Also, what things?”
“Right now, no… there were two other survivors out of our entire crew, but I can’t seem to get a hold of them right now. As to how I got a hold of you, I was testing different radio channels in hopes to find the others, and I guess I found you instead. And as to what the things are… w-well…”
As if on cue, loud bangs were heard from above. Baki barely had time to get back into a defensive stance before whatever was making all of that noise finally managed to tear a hole in the ceiling and come crashing down. Baki quickly moved out of the way to avoid it, but it came down too fast for him to get a good look at it.
“Oh my God, that’s it!!! It’s one of them!! You need to run!”
Baki finally adjusted his eyes on what had just landed beneath him. It was a horrifying sight. At first he thought it was a bloodied up corpse, but then it started to move. The thing had two strange limbs protruding from his back which ended in one sharp claw. It had shiny white fangs and no lower jaw, and it made a strange guttural screeching noise. Its white dead eyes stared at Baki for a moment before seemingly recognizing him as an enemy and leaping towards him with a violent screech. Baki quickly dodged the lunging monster.
“There should be a gun in one of the lockers behind you. Your suit should make it so you’re able to instantly open any locker” Kendra sounded increasingly panicked, as if she attempted to say everything as quickly as possible because she feared that Baki could die before hearing the end of her sentence.
The monster charged at him, this time running upright. The way it quickly moved across the room despite looking like it was shuffling was incredibly unsettling. Baki dodged out of the way again as the monster attempted to swing at him, which caused it to stumble and lose its balance. Baki used this as a way to get as much distance between him and the monster as possible.
“No. No weapons. If I don’t kill this thing with my bare hands, this is no training at all”.
“Training?! What are you talking about? Not using a gun is suicide! You need to shoot the limbs to kill it! There is no other way!”
“The limbs, huh?”
The monster had recovered from its fall and was getting ready to charge at Baki yet again, announcing its intentions with a scream.
I need to get close enough to it to be able to tear apart its limbs…
This time when the monster charged at him, Baki quickly decided that the long sharp tendons coming from its back were probably his best bet, as they seemed to be the thinnest and the easiest to grab.
Once the monster was within reach distance, Baki quickly made to grab both of these strange limbs, its real arms dangling uselessly beneath it. Baki made to put his foot on its abdomen and push him in order to easily tear his limbs, but before he could do it the beast screamed and sunk its sharp and unnatural fangs into his shoulder. Baki screamed too.
“You… idiot! I knew this would happen”.
“No… it’s not over yet!”
Baki pressed on, in spite of the horrific, stinging pain he was feeling. It fuelled his sense of urgency. He shoved the monster as hard as he possibly could, strengthened his grab on its limbs as hard as he possibly could, and he started feeling them begin to move out of their place. As he was doing this, the monster pressed his fangs harder into Baki’s shoulders. Blood started gushing out.
“Get… off me… you demon!”
Baki pushed the monster and pulled on its limbs even harder, and with one last violent yank he managed to rip both of its limbs out at once with a sickening, wet sound. The sudden change in weight made Baki stumble backwards and fall on his back. The monster did the same in the opposite direction.
Silence.
Catching his breath Baki slowly gets up, clutching his now damaged shoulder.
“Ya still think I need a gun now?”
“I… I can’t believe you actually did that! I’ve never seen such a thing!”
Baki walked over to the immobile monster, studying it for a moment.
“Is there a name for these things?”
“Yes… some of the people studying them called them “Necromorphs””.
But before they could relax for too long the, beast began twitching and screaming again. It flipped on its stomach and slowly began to crawl up to Baki, determined to have its revenge.
“Oh dear God it’s still alive! Why can’t these things ever stay dead?! Maybe you can…”
Before Kendra could finish her sentence, Baki, without thinking, acting out of a pure mixture of disgust and horror, decided to just step on the damn thing’s head. It gave in with a satisfying crunch. It was so satisfying that he stomped on it several more times to ensure that it wouldn’t get back up.
Kendra’s voice came back on the radio, snapping Baki out of the trance he put himself in “Uh… there’s a medkit in one of the lockers as well. It’s the latest CEC technology. It will heal your pierced shoulder in no time”.
Baki walked over to the lockers that he neglected early. Sure enough, there was the medkit. A small, strange cylinder.
“If you’re really brave enough for the task of saving us, I can send you the map with my location. We can meet there and then discuss how we can find the others. I don’t want to say much here… this channel might not be completely private. Are you sure you don’t want to take that gun?”
Baki looked at both of his arms “Nah… I got two guns right here. More than enough for these things”.