Historical Background: Preface

The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 sparked a brutal war that lasted until Japan's defeat by the Allied Powers in 1945. At the time of the invasion, China was in political chaos, and while Chiang-Kai-Shek's Nationalist government was the officially recognized political force in China, dozens of rural warlords (including Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists) still controlled their own sectors of the country. Taking advantage of the civil war between the various Chinese factions, the Imperial Japanese were able to move quickly and seized most of China's major cities within the space of three years.

The fact that there are Western characters is due to the fact that Japan was not at war with the Western powers until 1941. Therefore foreigners and their interests were still present in China up until Pearl Harbor.

I realize this isn't your traditional tournament-style fighting Street Fighter fanfic. But please, enjoy it nonetheless.

Shanghai, 1937

She watched in agony, her heart sinking as the Japanese flags unfurled in the street, filling the avenues with their ugly crimson glare. It meant not only that Shanghai was finished, but that China's hopes were gone too. Those flags stood for failure, for defeat, and for the death of everything that was beautiful in her homeland.

The tears began to well up in her eyes, but with a quick abrupt movement she angrily brushed them from her eyelashes before they could fall. She had been raised to be strong, to push forward where others fell behind. Her father had taught her this as a young child in their home village, along with the moves and motions of the kung-fu style that the Zhang family had practiced for centuries.

And then he'd died. Just like that. He had been out practicing his forms in the early morning hours in the middle of the village square when a bomb, dropped from a passing Japanese Zero had exploded in the middle of the square. He must have been killed instantly, the letter had read, as if those words were supposed to make her feel better. A death was still a death no matter how it was worded. And now, Japan had taken not only her father from her, but her country as well. She could feel the hatred running through her body, charging her with vile thoughts.

The loud cheers of the Japanese soldiers below her reached her, the sound ugly to her ears. That dreaded "Banzai! Banzai!" that Chinese everywhere had learned to fear sounded hideous to her hearing and she covered her ears before closing the window behind her.

Running her hands over her stylishly cut blue silk dress, she sighed to herself, straightening her features as she turned to face the other girls. She must not appear weak, even if her heart told her to collapse into her hands and cry. Not only would it ruin the morale of the other girls, it would spoil her makeup and as the owner of one of Shanghai's finest nightclubs, it would be most unseemly for her to appear distressed.

"Mistress Chun Li?" inquired an attractive young girl dressed in a dark red dress daringly slit to mid-thigh. "What are we to do?"

Chun Li tried her best to force a smile onto her face, though it fell short at seeing the frightened faces of the girls in front of her. Most of them were barely eighteen, years below her age of twenty-three and had either been sold into her service or had been girls she herself had saved from the horrors of prostitution. Most of them had nowhere to go and no one to look after them.

"We'll make out all right girls. For tonight, carry on as usual. We're not going to let something like an invasion ruin the best nightclub in Shanghai."

And though she smiled, it took all of her strength to push it onto her features.

He saluted, a crisp motion that brought him to attention as the Imperial Japanese flag went by, it's red orb resplendent against the unblemished white background. That flag stood for everything Japan had accomplished in the scant seventy years since the Meiji Restoration. The defeat of the decadent czarist navy at Tsushima, the occupation of Korea, and the modernization of Japan were all represented by that bright crimson orb. He swelled his chest, feeling a sense of pride as it passed. The choker collar, emblazoned with his marks of rank puffed outwards and the sword by his side clanked quietly as he stood ramrod-straight.

He was new to China, but not new to the Army. He had voluntarily joined the military in 1931 after graduating from high school in Tokyo. His father, Baron Aritaka Hoshi, a wealthy merchant with connections to the prestigious Mitsubishi zaibatsu, had secured for his son a captainship pending his graduation from the grueling conditions of the Imperial Military Academy at Ichigaya. Upon completion of the officer curriculum he was to become Captain Ryu Hoshi, instead of just Ryu as his childhood friends had called him.

He had graduated from Ichigaya with his skills honed to perfection. The Shotokan karate his father had made him learn as a child had taught him patience and discipline; characteristics that quickly elevated him to the top of his class. His old master, Gouken, had taught him the values of self-sacrifice and endowed him with the desire to excel at whatever he set out to do. Despite this, he had seen little fighting since his enlistment; his forces always being deployed to areas that were already occupied.

But now in Shanghai, he was at the front line of the fighting. Even though the city had fallen to the Japanese with few casualties on the Japanese side, he knew that Chiang-Kai-Shek's armies were now regrouping in the south and that this time they would not flee. He did not possess the animalistic hatred of the Chinese as many of his fellow soldiers did, but he did believe firmly that no country, no matter how great or grand, could ever equal that of Japan's.

"Great field marshal on the steps of heaven! Live ten thousand years! Banzai!" came the cry of thousands of voices in unison.

"Banzai!" he shouted along with his fellows.

(Chapter II coming soon)