Street Fighter Masters- Karin # 1

 By Mark Rodriguez

Some time ago, the Udon comics introduced a group of original enemies called Vortex. So far Chun Li, Zangief, Guile and Elena have run into different members of this evil organization. Now it's Karin's turn. Let's see what happens.

The story opens at the Kanzuki Corporation Mountaintop R&D Tech Facility in the Dufourspitze, Swiss Alps where Birdie is was told to stand outside because 'his face was ruining the vibe'. He's freezing and has half a mind to leave if the only way off the mountain wasn't be helicopter. Karin's butler, Ishizaki shows up with Birdie's lunch, a huge burger accompanied by a jar of horseradish. Just then, something is seen in the distance, flying his way and he wonders what it is.

A young woman with green hair lands in front of Birdie, her parachute falling all over him. She says it would have been cooler if she smashed through the skylight. Birdie tells her the party is by invite only and unless she has one, she'll get knocked off the mountain. The woman seems confident and is un-wavered by his threat. 

In the reception hall, Karin is mingling with other daughters of successful CEOs as part of their annual luncheon. One of the ladies ask why Karin held it on the side of the mountains in the Alps. Karin says the eggheads behind their latest products mentioned the cold air being good for the circuits. One of their new products is a prototype hover pod that Ishizaki is testing with a remote. He accidentally motions the pod to crash into some of the food and drinks. Karin tells him to clean up the mess just as Birdie is suddenly dropped in the middle of the room.

Karin cross her arms and tells Birdie that he's ruining the luncheon again. Birdie, battered and beaten, motions behind him and tells her there's someone to see her. The new girl, armed with a guitar, says the room suddenly got awesome.

 

Karin asks who this person is. One of the guests recognize her as Olive Ong. Karin tries to remember where she heard that last name before and another guest says she's the darling of the indie punk scene. Karin tells Olive that she never heard of her and the luncheon is invite-only. Olive laments not getting invited to her 'lame party of bubbleheaded rich girls'.

Just then, Olive tosses a letter in Karin's face, saying she's been getting invites for years and usually burns them. She tells Birdie that she had an invite after all. Birdie, still unable to get off the ground, weakly says it's fine as long as she learned her lesson. Karin asks if she's from Ongtech Conglomerate. Olive says that is her father's company, and they're easy to miss since they're way above the Kanzuki Zaibatsu when it comes to the stock market.

Karin asks why she finally decided to grace them with her presence. Olive says she's been  trying to reach her and got tired of leaving her calling card all over her buildings. Karin gets angry and asks why she's been spray-painting 'Karin Kazuki sucks' all over her properties. Olive says because it's true and is doing the world a public service. Karin says she might as well enjoy the luncheon while she's here. Olive says she'd much rather enjoy an avalanche taking the place down. Ishizaki says their helicopters didn't cause enough noise to create an avalanche, and you would need something well over 250 decibels to do so. Olive takes note of that. Ishizaki is an idiot, and Karin is one too for not calling him out....

Sometime later, Olive is working on a console. Karin peaks in and says the area she is in is restricted and accuses her of industrial sabotage. Olive says her father has people for that and she is more interested in helping herself to some of her inventions. Karin tells her to leave her stuff alone. Olive says she upgraded her 'hung of junk' hover pods with Ongtech technology to make them usable. Karin asks what Ongtech actually makes.

 

Olive reveals she's into Sonic Controlled Technology. She can now use her guitar to control the hover pods. Karin smacks one of them away and says they're impressive but they are still Kanzuki property and will have to stay there. Olive says the best part if the hover pods now have concert hell yield going above 250 decibels. Karin's eyes widened as she gets where Olive is getting at.

Olive jams on her guitar and the vibrations knock Karin off her feet. The rumbling shakes several of the guests to the floor. The alerts go off warning everyone of an imminent avalanche. Olive makes fun of the guests and Karin tells her to shut up and get to the chopper. 

At the chopper, everyone is present and accounted for except for Olive. Karin says they'll leave once she gets there, but she will have a lot to answer for once they land again. Birdie says he caught sight of Olive making off with one the company's smart snowboards. He adds that she's brave to outrun an avalanche on a snowboard, and she probably had all of this planned from the start. Karin suddenly jumps out of the helicopter and grabs a smart snowboard of her own.

 

Karin catches up to Olive and tells her not to run off with Kazuki property. Olive says chasing her during an avalanche shows she's not as prissy as the online rumors about her say. Granted, Olive herself made those online rumors... Karin catches some air and lands right behind her. Both women start fighting while snowboarding. Olive says her fighting style can't stand up to her Silat style. Karin knew Silat favors close quarter combat, so she needs to put some distance between them.

Olive lands a spinning kick that knocks Karin off her board. Karin panics until she sees something. Olive gets away and laments that after the avalanche takes out Karin, she'll have to find someone else to hate. Just then Karin calls out her name. Karin is standing atop a fallen tree that is also sliding down the avalanche. Olive leaps onto the tree and lunges out at her. Karin flips over her and grabs Olive's jacket before she can fall off.

 

Karin tells Olive to get up and fight, as she's not getting off so easy. Olive remembers she has tech on her side and prepares to jam on her guitar. The tree suddenly smashes into rocks, knocking both women off it. Olive wants to fight and Karin reminds her of the avalanche. Karin grabs the guitar and hopes her Shamisen lessons don't fail her now. She jams on the guitar and the resulting shockwave knocks the snow back as Olive lands on a snow pile. Karin notices that this fried the smart hover pods. 

 

Karin finally asks what Olive's problem is, since she's been nothing but begrudgingly cordial to her. Olive brings up an incident at Tokyo Dizzyland, which shocks Karin as she remembers. Karin remembers Olive being invited to her 6th birthday which resulted in burning down the park. Olive says due to Karin telling on her, she got banned from all Dizzylands worldwide. She ended up burying her angst in her music. Karin says she must be the reason why she hates olives.

Karin says her rescue chopper is here and she'll worse than being banned from theme parks once they get back to civilization. The helicopter happens to be for Olive, and she uses it to get away. Karin sighs but says at least she didn't get away with anything important. We see that Olive has some blueprints in one of her jacket pockets.

 

My Thoughts- 

So this was quite the story. I like seeing how Karin, despite everything, has mellowed out as she got older. As much as she was seething due to Olive's antics, she still was accommodating to her as reasonably possible. I can imagine the Alpha 3 Karin would start a fight with Olive the moment he caught her in the console room without trying to find out what exactly she was doing.

Olive is quite the character. Rude, arrogant and incredibly full of herself. I liked the disrespectful way she just... kept on messing with Karin's stuff after being caught red-handed. She just treated Karin as if she wasn't worth being worried about. Olive fights using Silat, and sadly we didn't to see too much of those actually fighting. Olive was knocked off the tree, along with Karin, and Karin did blast her with some ear-splitting decibels... but I would have liked to have seen Karin land a good hit on her directly. I do like the extra suspense of them chasing and fighting each other during an avalanche, but if we had a few more pages, we could have had them fight it out once they got to safer footing.

Olive did succeed in stealing some Kanzuki tech. I figured those blueprints were the main goal and everything was just trolling. We do see total disregard for life as she was more than happy to leave Karin to her fate at the hands of an avalanche. On the other hand, Karin was more than willing to save Olive several times from the avalanche that she herself caused.

The little backstory is as silly as some things are in the world of Street Fighter. Olive burned down half of the amusement park and ended up getting banned for life. Of course, it's Karin's fault for snitching, and not Olive's fault for you know... actually burning down Dizzyland. One thing confusing about the flashback, is the fact that it seems Darkstalkers characters were used as mascots? I know it's for cameo's sake... but if we were to take it seriously, are the Darkstalkers characters just public knowledge to the point that they are used as amusement park mascots?

 

 

Now that we got the Zangief, Guile and Elena stories out of the way, it looks like Ken will be the next one to get a Masters book. There's also a Street Fighter # 0 one-shot coming out for this year's Free Comic Book Day, so that'll be worth a look.