JULY 27, 2008 2:40 PM
STEINWAY BEER GARDEN
DUKES, LIBERTY CITY

Steinway's bartender cleaned his last glass and started setting drink menus on the tables. It was very early, now. Only the guys who drank alone were in the bar before six, and they usually didn't stay very long before getting mopey and moving on. He checked his watch. One of his more regular customers was running late.

As if on cue, a hulking seven foot figure who must have weighed at least 400 pounds- Oscar the bartender liked to guess, but always kept it to himself- wearing what must have been a custom-sized trench coat and a balaclava walked through the door. All anyone could really see of the enormous figure were his eyes, which Oscar sometimes fancied weren't quite human. And who knows? Maybe they weren't. Anything was possible after the Portal Storms of '04.

The figure stood at the bar, as he did every evening he was able to get out, declining the options presented to him by the barstools- he had never met one yet that could support him.

"Hey, Oscar," he said, leaning a bit forward. His sandy, red- could you even call it skin?- was visible between his eyes.

"Grok," Oscar nodded in response. That was it. Grok. The only name the patron went by. One time, when Oscar was feeling saucy and Grok was feeling pretty drunk, he dared to ask what his REAL name was.

"Honestly?" He said. "Grok is just a nickname. My full name… is Grok the Mad." That was the last time Oscar asked.

"Let me guess," Oscar said. "Scotch on the rocks?"

Grok grunted his approval, shifting some more weight onto the counter.

Oscar poured him half a glass of scotch and reached under the counter for a bucket of round objects Grok had once given him for such an occasion and dropped a few into his drink. Oscar had tried one once, when he was feeling brave, and almost broke his teeth on it. It seemed it actually was a rock.

Grok pulled up his balaclava a little bit, exposing his enormous mouth, spanning the entirety of his irregularly large, round head. "Bottoms up," he toasted the bartender, and threw back the whole concoction.

"Let me ask you something, Oscar," Grok said as the barkeep went back to setting his menus. "How satisfied have you been, overall, with your defense from supervillainy, on a scale of one to five- five being the best?"
Oscar took Grok's characteristically oddball question into serious consideration for a moment or two. "Eh…. four."

"Four? Why four?"

"Well, I've never really met a supervillain before, so that means whoever's out there defending me is doing their job- but I take a point off because I don't think they're really a problem to deal with, in which case whatever defense is being provided from them is a little too much."

Grok went through a motion which could best be described as a chuckle, but not quite. "Wouldn't want to see your tax dollars going to waste, would you, Oscar?"

"That crap's government funded?" Oscar said. "I thought it was a free service. I'm changing my answer."

"No one ever wants to pay for anything until they need to," Grok mused.

"You're telling me. I imagine if I finally stopped extending your credit, you would pay me one of these days."

"I'm just testing your limits, Oscar. Trying to see how far you can go before you…" Grok grabbed a pickle from a jar on the counter and broke it in two. "snap."

"Enjoying yourself?" asked a somewhat wheezy but commanding voice from Grok's right. The trench coated monster jumped a little. Oscar did too. He hadn't even seen anyone come in.

"Crap, man! You gotta stop doing that! And what are you doing here? It's my day off," he lied.

"Time… matters little to our LINE of… work, Grok." He stressed the double Ks. "And usuALLy… not at all."

The man standing behind him, middle-aged with a tall and thin physique, pale skin, a brown crew cut with a prominent widow's peak, blue-green eyes, and a cheap gray-blue suit reached into his equally inexpensive-looking briefcase and handed Grok a packet of information he was going to have to read. He always had a reading assignment before he got to bust heads.

"Would you excuse us for a minute?" Grok asked his bartending compatriot, and nodded towards the bathroom.

"I guess I'll just… clean the stalls, then, lunch rush being over and all." Oscar said to himself, hardly believing Grok had just commandeered the Beer Garden.

Grok took off his balaclava, revealing his bald head and hairless face, red as a ripe tomato. Ruby Gorons were rare, especially today, but not unheard of- at least not by those unconvinced that Gorons did not exist at all. Had he taken a bath once in a while, he would shine bright enough to light up half the bar- but he didn't want that, anyway. He picked up the packet and flipped through it. "Soul Edge?" he asked. "That sword's been lying around since the 1600s. Can't it wait another day?"

"On the contRARy, Grok… ATTENTION to this MATTER… is long OVERdue." The G-Man, as he was commonly referred to by the staff of DDD and the Galactic Federation in general, seemed to be in need of some serious speech therapy… though as likely as not, he was just talking this way on purpose.

"This Heihachi guy… isn't he the CEO of some major Japanese company? What would he want with Soul Edge?"

"Keep reading, Grok."

Grudgingly, Grok obliged. Apparently, after the fourth Tekken Tournament, Heihachi Mishima, martial artist and mastermind of Japanese megacorporation Mishima Zaibatsu, was caught in an explosion which temporarily sent an aspect of him back in time to the late 16th century, where he learned of the existence of the legendary Soul Edge and attempted to obtain it, only to be thwarted by the rapier-wielding Raphael Sorel, sending him back to his own time to find his company had transferred ownership in his absence. Now, in an attempt to regain the company, Heihachi and his Tekken Force, a special ops division of Zaibatsu that remains loyal to him search for Soul Edge once more.

"Sounds messy," Grok said, putting the packet down.

"Fighting GAME plots are…. always 'messy,' Grok. And crossOVERs more so," G-Man said cryptically. More often than not, Grok had no idea what his employer was talking about.

"So… what? We start looking all over Europe for this guy?"

"An INside INformant tells… me Mishima-ssssan will sssoon… be in Ostrheinsburg Castle, where he lasst ssaw Sssoul Edge. You leave… tomorrow, monDAY morNING."

"Shellbrain already knows about this?"

"I met with Damian… at Department Headquarters. Where he is SUPPOSED to be," the G-Man indicated disapprovingly of Grok.

"Hey, it's easy for him. Magikoopas are happy to just practice all day, maybe zap a plumber or two," Grok explained, going behind the counter to poor himself another scotch. "Gorons have to roam a little. Steinway's only a block away from HQ anyway. Not like I'm going so far." But by the time he turned around, The G-Man was gone.
"I hate it when he does that," Grok grumbled. "Who does he think he is, Batman?"

"Well, I'm done in here!" Oscar shouted. "I guess I'll clean the Ladies' Room now!"

"It's okay, Oscar, he's gone," Grok said, putting his balaclava back on.

"Cripes, that guy gives me the creeps," Oscar said, dropping a couple of rocks into Grok's drink.

"Yeah, me too. And I've been working for him for four years now."

"Do me a favor, Grok. Keep your meetings outside my bar from now on, okay? I don't always get the most legally honest clientele here. He looks like he could be an FBI agent or something."

"You have no idea." Grok finished his drink, picked up his mission statement, and started towards the door.

"Hey! Where are you going? You usually drink far more than two glasses of scotch before you ditch the bill."

"I've got business in Germany tomorrow morning. I'm getting my hammer."