Before Ryu could see what exactly was coming for him, Juri's heel hit his cheek clean. It was so fast that by the time he could hear the distortion in the air, his face was already 90 degrees to his left from the force.

"KYAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!"

He turned to look ahead once again only to see nothing, and again he was kicked. The two strikes to his back almost shattered his spine, and it sent him flying three feet away before he fell to the ground.

"You're weak." Three hits and Ryu was yet to see her face. Only her voice echoed in his ears. "TOO WEAK!"

He was trying to stand up again when he felt someone rushing towards him. Intuitively, he jumped off the ground with his right leg spinning. It was a successful counterattack; his feet managed to hit her face. When he landed, he swiftly took the opportunity from Juri's distracted state. Just as she was going to look back at his face in anger, a hook punch landed on her abdomen and an uppercut under her chin, and Ryu spun 180 degrees into a powerful reverse thrust kick, again at her abdomen. Juri got sent back five feet and crouched down holding her stomach.

"You're finally serious, I take it...?" She smiled at Ryu, who was then in stance and fully prepared for a full-blown fight. "THEN LET'S TAKE IT TO YOUR DEATH!"

Ryu moved towards her first. He threw a pair of left-right jabs towards her face which she evaded with a flick of her head. She was going to counter him with a left backhand and a reverse spinning high kick, but he ducked away and kicked Juri's standing leg to knock her down. She rolled herself back soon after the fall and proceeded to dash towards him with a non-contact high kick that produced a single beam of energy. Ryu managed to block it and was preparing for an energy attack of his own when his face got hit by another one of Juri's high-speed flying sudden and strong kick made him lose enough awareness for her to land two rapid side kicks to his abdomen and lower jaw before she hopped backwards away from him.

He lost balance and almost fell to the ground. When he finally snapped back and hold his body still, he began to sense a rapid disturbance in the ki around him. It was then that he could see Juri, a few dozen feet away from him, with her left eye glowing into a bright purple. It was obvious to him by then that her strange ki was artificial, and it might have something to do with that left eye of hers.

"You disappoint me, Ryu. For all that hype, I thought you were much more." Juri's grin ghastly complemented her widely opened right eye. "I'll take you down and bring you back to being a loser that you really are!"

In a split second, Juri went from complete stationary to almost the speed of sound. As she was only a few feet from Ryu, she began to turn her body, intending to destroy his internal organs with one spinning thrust kick right on the center of his stomach. For Ryu, it was a mistake; Having predicted her tendencies correctly this time, he quickly stepped aside and escaped the right thrust kick by less than half an inch from his skin. He then grabbed her right leg and threw her up backwards. With Juri flailing on air, screaming as she lost control of herself, Ryu raised his left fist to hit her stomach with the combined force of gravity. It was fierce enough that saliva coughed out of her mouth, and she floated back up briefly before Ryu's right fist came into contact with her lower jaw.

"Metsu...!" Ryu exerted all of his strength into that one right uppercut before jumping up and accumulated more force with his legs into a jumping uppercut. "SHOURYUUKEN!"

As he landed back to the ground, he could not hear anything further from Juri. There were neither screams nor sighs; only a deep thudding sound of a body crashing back to Earth. When he looked at her, he could only see a passed out woman, with some blood dripping out of her mouth.

He stood still there for a while, with all the questions he could not ask himself during the fight now whirling inside his mind. It was not until Ken emerged from the bushes running, that he finally came back to his senses.

"RYU!" He was no longer wearing his red blazer. A dry leaf stuck on his long blonde hair. "What the fuck just happened here! I sensed some alien ki and then I thought I felt the Dark Hadou coming out!"

"Dark Hadou...?"

"Aww man...! And why Gunma is lying on the ground! Who is this woman?"

"...She had beaten Gunma, and she fought me..."

Ken stepped in closer to him and the unconscious Juri. "What did this bitch do?"

"Ken, just..." Ryu could not bother to even look at Ken's face. "Just get Gunma to the hospital immediately. He won't last much longer if you don't help him."

"But what about you? Not to mention this woman coming out of nowhere?"

"I'll take care of her. You just take Gunma away."

"You don't think I'm gonna leave you alone after I sensed Dark Hadou, do you?"

"Please, Ken..." Ryu understood Ken's concern. The Dark Hadou was probably leaked off his ki when he was so desperate to bring Juri down with the strongest form of Shouryuuken he knew, and the dangers he experienced with that power in the past meant that he was increasingly at risk. However, Gunma's safety is more important to him at that moment, and there were many things he would like to clarify with the seemingly demented woman, even if he had some gut feeling that what she would say would not make much sense.

Meanwhile, frustration towards Ryu began to well up inside Ken. He realized that whatever just happened could not be entirely his fault, but he was annoyed at Ryu's treatment towards him and the whole situation. Never the less, he tolerated it.

"Fine.. I'll take Gunma to hospital in town, but I will come back for answers, pal."

"Answers are the things I intend to look for, from this woman."

Ken carried Gunma in piggyback and ran out of the temple into the forest. Ryu, still standing at the same spot, only stared at the woman, quietly breathing on the ground. He started to feel as if the weird ki the woman possessed was influencing the Dark Hadou inside him, and he may put himself in danger just by staying close to her. His humanity overridden those worries and he carried her body into one of the buildings.