Three days later saw Ryu entering Houston, Texas. Thinking to himself: "Now to find a place to restock and get the information I need to find the fights." Ryu mused to himself, "no matter where you go in the world; you will always find at least one underground fight circuit in every major city. Sometimes more than one. Then of course you have the ultra-secret Tournaments like the Street Fighter ones or the King of Fighters."

He continued his train of thought and said: "The King of Fighters is a tournament I wouldn't mind entering sometime. Your choice of entry from one to three person teams. Who would I want on my team?" Ryu said to himself. "I know I could count on Ken to team up with me for sure. Maybe Chun-Li or Terry Bogard or Ryo Sakazaki would make a good team-up as well. If Sagat could only get past his hatred of me for defeating him in the first Street Fighter tournament he would be a powerful ally. It's too bad that he joined Shadowlaw and Bison."

For a moment, the thought of Bison triggered a surge of memories that were mostly unpleasant. There was the time that Bison had captured him and turned him into a mindless slave that had nearly killed his best friend Ken, back when Ryu was just learning about Hadou. Unconsciously, Ryu rubbed at the scar under his headband where the control chip had been. Then there was the time that Bison had captured Ken and used a different kind of mind control on him. Both times, Ryu thought that Bison had been defeated but evil like Bison's was never truly gone. "Oh well, such is the nature of evil." he mused. "That there can never be good without evil to balance it is a foregone conclusion. If that is my karma, then so be it. I would gladly fight, rather than let someone like Bison rule the world."

As he crossed a street he passed a storefront and heard a crash and an exclamation of: "I don't understand, I don't understand!" The only thing that made this stand out in Ryu's mind was that it was stated in his native Japanese. He stopped where he was and looked into the store. He saw an older Japanese couple, obviously the store owners because they were behind the counter being yelled at by a young man and two companions. All three youths sported shaved heads, jeans in various states of disrepair and tank tops. There were many piercings as well as tattoos of skulls and swastikas. The youth in front of the other two was yelling: "Learn my language you worthless jap slope heads! Gimme your goddamn money now or I'll gut you both and mount you on my wall at home!"

This last remark set the three to laughing as they each drew a knife and stepped toward the couple. Ryu wasted no words as he threw his bag full force and hit the youth in front, full on the side of the head and sent him sprawling. The other two stopped laughing and looked over at what they thought would be a dead man shortly. One of them said: "Man, another gook. I swear they seem to come out of the woodwork around here." The speaker started to charge at Ryu.

Ryu stepped across intohis Joudan Sokutou Geri side kickthat caught the youth square in the gut and sent him careening to the side into a rack of chips. The second youth flipped his knife in his hand and threw it at Ryu's chest. Ryu saw it coming in seeming slow motion thanks to the Hadou of Intent that he had long since mastered and caught the knife one handed. Using the momentum of the thrown knife, Ryu spun on the ball of one foot and threw it back at the ground between the legs of the one who had thrown it, where it stuck in the tile floor with a slight quivering motion. The skinhead stared open mouthed at the flawless catch and return and quickly lost his will to fight. As he tried to run around a display and back into the street Ryu was in front of him suddenly.

This skinhead too, quickly joined his moaning companion on the floor after a quick one-two punch combination to the gut and face. The last skinhead had since gotten up and was coming up behind Ryu to stab him in the back when one of the shop owners said: "Behind you Ryu-san!" Ryu already knew but appreciated the warning anyway and used his best basic technique. In his many travels, his spinning heel kick had given many opponents pause. This one was no different as it caught the skinhead across the face and spun the youth around where he crashed into a Hostess display and lay still.

All told, the entire fight was done in little over a minute. Ryu turned to the owners and bowing low, apologized in Japanese and offered to pay for the damages. The owners returned the bow and said in accented but perfectly understandable English: "Thank you Ryu-san but you don't have to pay anything. We are grateful for your aid. In way of thanks, please take what you need."

As much as Ryu wanted to pay for everything, he knew it would be incredibly rude to ignore the gift, so he found what he needed, put it in his bag and said: "Thank you for your kindness but how do you know my name? I just got into the city." The shopkeeper said: "We know of you because you helped to destroy Shadowlaw. When Shadowlaw started taking over the local Yakuza, who were already charging us "protection", the Shadowlaw leader suddenly dropped out of sight and everything started to return to normal here, but now you must go. The local police will be here soon and we can't have our rescuer get arrested for streetfighting can we?" This last was said with a laugh. Ryu said: "Do you know where I can find the local fights?" The shopkeeper said: "Look downtown for a man who goes by the street name "Ulsio the Rat", he can direct you from there." Ryu thanked them and bowed again as he walked out of the store and looked for the street signs pointing the way to downtown.