I'm at a bit of a loose end at the moment. I haven't really got any works in the pipeline, and probably just as well, given the amount of rods I've made for my back, so here's something I dug up from the archives, albeit more recent than most offerings of this kind.

Followers of my works will doubtless have encountered my Street Fighter crossover Zen and the Art of Magical Bonding Between Former Child Soldiers. During my posting of that story, a few reviewers suggested I do another Street Fighter story, but with a Harry/Chun Li pairing. Now, I normally don't take unsolicited suggestions, but the concept intrigued me enough to give it a go. Unfortunately, my attempts didn't make it very far, and I'm not sure I can ever continue it beyond the first chapter. So, sadly, this is probably all you'll see of The Romance of Crime-Fighting, apart from this initial chapter.

The most vital problem (apart from lack of motivation) is a problem of source material. I'm unfamiliar with the storyline of the games, and had based my earlier crossover on the Udon comics. My fear was that, if I did it like this, many elements would be retreading the same ground as my earlier crossover. In fact, I'm more likely to take up my own 'Hadou Harry' challenge that I posted in the forums of DZ2 and whitetigerwolf, because, as much as I don't want to do yet another Year 4 story, it'd be fun to see a Harry trained by Gouken alongside Ryu and Ken kicking arse in the TWT. I can play a little more loosely with the source material, that way. Of course, whether I actually do that is another matter entirely.

The name, incidentally, comes from the title of one of my favourite Doctor Who novels, The Romance of Crime, written by Gareth Roberts, and recently adapted by Big Finish into an audio story. The title of said story is actually a quote from the Morrissey song Sister I'm a Poet.


THE ROMANCE OF CRIME-FIGHTING

CHAPTER 1:

THE FIRST MEETING

For such a good thing to come into his life, it began very badly. Namely, with Dudley being lazy, and foisting his work onto him. Namely, writing to a penpal. Dudley didn't want to write to someone in Hong Kong, and Vernon agreed, saying that his boy shouldn't have to write to some Chink girl if he didn't want to. So, instead, Dudley was able to write to an Italian girl (who turned out to be a daughter of a high-ranking Camorra boss, but that's a story for another time), and Harry was made to write to a girl in Hong Kong.

Not that it really turned out badly, in the end. As it happened, Harry exchanged a series of letters with the girl from Hong Kong. The letters did peter out somewhat during his time at Hogwarts, and all he could really tell her was that he went to boarding school in Scotland.

In effect, the girl was his first friend, even if she was on the other side of the world, and he only knew her face thanks to the photos she sent. He had to wait until Hogwarts, and he could afford his own camera, before he could send his own. She was quite pretty, even if that twin-bun hairstyle was a bit weird. In a way, his crush on Cho was probably a misplaced crush on his penpal. After all, Cho was here in England, and his penpal wasn't.

In truth, he never thought he'd meet her. And he had other things to worry about, like the annual 'DADA teacher trying to kill him' attempt, or whatever mess Dumbledore had dropped him into from a great height. Plus, how was he supposed to get over to Hong Kong? And since Voldemort came back, it was harder to send mail to her. It took some time after he defeated Voldemort to send a letter to her, saying that he was having to deal with a terrorist who had murdered his parents, and had come out of hiding to kill him. It took a while to start it up again.

When he did, Hermione actually helped him learn Chinese, at least enough to write some parts of his letters in the language, as well as enough Cantonese to speak to her. Though he did struggle somewhat with the tonal language.

Anyway, after all was said and done…Harry felt adrift within Magical Britain. The new heights of fame were sickening to him, and to Ron and Hermione. He was glad Ron, who had been a bit of a glory hound, had a reality check thanks to the sheer bloodbath that was the second Voldemort war. Ginny, however, was another matter, keeping on hounding him about marrying him, now that Voldemort was out of the way. That hadn't ended well. Harry had to avoid the Burrow, because of Ginny. Not because of Ron or Molly or anyone else.

It wasn't that Ginny was bad, just that she was fixated and insistent. She couldn't see past the image of Harry Potter. Even though she was the one to break up with him after Dumbledore's funeral, he got the impression that was to make his heart grow fonder. And while he was fond of Ginny, he realised it was strictly platonic. The same went for Ron and Hermione, the two amicably parting ways, at least in the romantic sense.

Harry, for want of anything better to do, began to take up martial arts. It was partly because of his penpal, who was apparently already a champion in Chinese kempo. Ron didn't see the point, and Hermione, although she did, didn't do more than the basics, and that was during her time in Hogwarts. Apparently Hermione had decided to work as a liaison between the Ministry and MI6, which was trying to work closer with the wizards after the Voldemort debacle. Harry was also training to take on a role as an Auror, maybe even a Hit-Wizard, not just because he had been considering it himself, but his penpal was also working to get into the police force herself, as her father was apparently a top police officer himself.

So, here he was, five years after Voldemort kicked the bucket. He had changed somewhat over that time. While he was not exactly unfit, his new martial arts training had toned his body. Ron had suggested entering a couple of competitions, but Harry demurred. The martial arts he had learned were, admittedly, more lethal than most. Voldemort may be dead, but many of his followers weren't, and Harry wanted to take them down if they tried to get revenge. Permanently. Plus, it helped give him extra weapons in the arsenal of an Auror.

Anyway, out of the blue, a couple of months ago, she had sent him her phone number, and after figuring out the time difference problems, he finally managed to call her. The first time he ever heard her voice. He haltingly and clumsily tried to speak Cantonese, only for her to laugh, and then speak to him in excellent English, which only had a slight accent to it. Her late mother, while of Chinese descent, had been born in Britain before moving to Hong Kong, and her father was also an excellent speaker of English.

His penpal had made it to being a detective in near-record time, and was possibly following in her father's footsteps to join Interpol's Hong Kong branch. Apparently they were having a lot of trouble with the crime syndicate and terrorist organisation known as Shadaloo.

Shadaloo…yes, the name given to a shadowy criminal syndicate that operated worldwide, though most of its operations seemed to be in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with bases and operations scattered throughout the rest of the world, particularly the Americas. Assassinations, trafficking of drugs, weapons and humans, money laundering, it had fingers in a lot of pies. It was led by the mysterious M Bison, and was rumoured to include within its ranks the famous Muay Thai champion Sagat, and Balrog, the infamously brutal American boxer known sometimes as the 'Crazy Buffalo'.

Kingsley had been hinting that he was considering bringing Harry into investigating Shadaloo, as some of its operations directly impacted Magical Britain. At least two kidnappings had been made, one of a prominent Unspeakable, and the other of a rather renowned researcher into the effects of emotion on spellcasting. And there were rumours of research into brainwashing and forbidden areas of soul magic.

While dealing with one would-be megalomaniac (for that's what the few concrete conclusions about M Bison indicated) was enough for a lifetime, Harry did find his 'saving people thing' going strong once more. Ginny had dumped him after Dumbledore's funeral for a time, claiming he wouldn't be happy unless he was pursuing Voldemort. And in a way, she was right in that much if nothing else. He needed an enemy to define him for so long, he didn't know what to do without one. There was something pretty twisted in his soul to want this, but it was true.

His penpal had, after some conversations, decided she was coming to Britain on holiday, and she wanted to meet him. All of which led to where he was right now…


The Globe Theatre. Once the site of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the playing company famous for having the likes of William Kempe, Richard Burbage, and, of course, the playwright William Shakespeare. It burned down in 1613, and while rebuilt, closed down for centuries a few decades later.

Then, Sam Wanamaker, the filmmaker and father of actress Zoe Wanamaker (whom Harry could have sworn blind was related to Madam Hooch(1)), intended to build a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre. It opened back in 1997. Harry remembered being dragged there by Hermione once she got her parents back from Australia, and cleared everything up. The Grangers were major Shakespeare buffs (apparently they met at university while doing The Winter's Tale, hence Hermione's name), and they had been pleased to go there.

He was surprised his penpal suggested this place. Then again, while there were a lot of tourist destinations in London, the Globe was probably one of the better ones. Maybe he could ask his penpal about what ones he could visit in Hong Kong.

He was watching from the stands as a couple of tourists decided to mangle the Yorick speech from Hamlet down below. He wondered if they really knew what it was about, about Hamlet reminiscing about what death and decay did to the man he had once loved, the wit and the jest. Or whether they knew that the 'To Be or Not To Be' speech was a contemplation of suicide. Took him until Hermione discussing it with him to get that, sadly.

Actually, he thought of As You Like It, and the speech about how all the world was a stage. He had to suffer being the leading man on the stage of Magical Britain, against his will, his life stage-managed by Dumbledore, for the consumption of the masses. He had this mental image of Dumbledore with a skullet(2), scribbling down a script of Harry's life, and chuckled bleakly. He got a less bitter chuckle out of himself when he thought of Shakespeare plays being livened up by some kung fu.

"Harry? Is that you?"

The voice brought him out of his thoughts, and he looked over, to find a woman about his age, with dark hair done up in twin buns, framing beautiful Chinese features. She wore jeans and a shirt, though they did little to conceal an athletic but attractive figure. "Chun Li?" Harry asked.

Chun Li smiled. "So it is you…it's good to meet you, at long last…"


They later ended up at the café of the Globe, having some tea. "It's not as good as some of the tea back home. There's a really good restaurant, the Genhanten, and I know the proprietor. He was one of my major teachers in martial arts," Chun Li said.

"You're better at them than I am, I'm sure," Harry said. "I only really started after I finished school."

As he took a sip of tea, Chun Li raised an eyebrow, and remarked, "You mean Hogwarts?"

He spat out his tea in shock, thankfully avoiding getting it all over Chun Li. He coughed and spluttered, and then stared at the Chinese woman, who said, quietly, "My master Gen is what you would call here in Britain a Squib. I never brought it up in our letters because of the Statute of Secrecy, but I know of your reputation. Actually, I'm glad you never bragged about such a thing."

Harry kept staring at Chun Li. She knew he was a wizard? "How long have you known?" he asked, hurriedly putting up privacy charms.

"Since I brought you up once with Gen, when I was in my teens. I started learning martial arts from him from an early age. Besides, I've seen and even done some extraordinary things myself, and it doesn't get covered up by the wizards. I'd show you…but we're in a public place. Anyway, you said you were training to join the police. Do you mean an Auror?"

"Yeah. And we've had our own troubles with Shadaloo here too," Harry said. "I've only really just finished training to be a Hit-Wizard."

"And what is that? An assassin?" Chun Li asked, her eyes narrowing.

"No, it's more like a SWAT operative. Though in some cases, we'd be expected to take down the target," Harry hastily clarified.

"I see. Sorry, but when you say 'Hit-Wizard'…"

"Yeah. It's a bit confusing," Harry said. "Wizards don't like to make things easy for those without magic to understand."

"That's fine. Believe it or not, many Chinese wizards make the Purebloods over here look accommodating to normal people, at least according to Gen," Chun Li said. "Apparently most of them got decimated when Mao Tse-Tung came to power. Still…Gen told me about Voldemort. I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I wouldn't know what that feels like, except for what you wrote in your letters."

Harry didn't say anything in reply. She wouldn't know what it was like. But at least she said as such. Okay, it was more than a bit of a shock to learn that she had known about him being a wizard for some time, but it wasn't like she could put it into a letter. Well, not without concealing it in some way.

"Hey," Chun Li said. "It's okay. We're not here to talk about your past. We're here to enjoy ourselves. Why don't you show me the sights, Harry?"

He nodded. Why not? He'd finally met his penpal, after all…


Chun Li was in London for a week, and a few times that week, he escorted her (not that she needed escorting, he was sure) to some of the sights in London. On her request, he even arranged a meeting with Ron and Hermione, both of whom knew of his penpal beforehand, with Luna Lovegood tagging along. Hermione, as always, was full of questions, though she mostly kept it to the type of martial arts Chun Li had learned. Ron was, surprisingly, filled with questions himself, about what life was like as a Muggle police officer. Being put through Auror training had been a wakeup call to the redhead, and he was beginning to mature somewhat.

Things got a little awkward when Harry happened to run into Cho Chang while taking Chun Li to the British Museum. He had told Chun Li of his crush on her some time before, and how it ended somewhat badly, what with the whole Marietta Edgecomb saga. Thankfully, nothing went too badly. Cho didn't stick around for long.

Of course, all too soon, Chun Li had to head back to Hong Kong. Still, Harry felt like he had gotten to know her far better than over a decade's worth of correspondence had done. They had exchanged emails (Harry only just starting to use the internet), and promised to contact each other.

Though soon, that would become a moot point…


About a week after Chun Li departed for Hong Kong, Kingsley Shacklebolt summoned Harry to a meeting, with Gawain Robards, who had become Head of the DMLE once more after the Death Eater takeover had been dealt with, also present. The meeting started off…well, badly.

"The truth is," Robards said, "there's a lot of dissension in the ranks, claiming you're coasting through here on your reputation."

Harry nodded. He wasn't angry at Robards, or at Kingsley. He'd heard these arguments before. "You could say the same thing about Ron or Hermione."

"Miss Granger is not the issue. Not only is she not an employee of the DMLE, but most of her work now is for MI6 as our liaison," Robards said. "And Mr Weasley doesn't have to suffer as many of the same comments. You understand, though, that your hyperinflated reputation does cause resentment. Not to mention the surviving Death Eaters and their sympathisers. And there's the increasing power of Shadaloo."

Kingsley nodded. "We know that more than a few Death Eaters had links to the organisation on the quiet. Not Malfoy or anyone who wouldn't deign to deal with Muggles, but a few who didn't care. MI6 and the ICPO have launched major investigations into Shadaloo, and it's past time we did the same. Their operations in Britain are limited, though. While they have operations across the world, the vast majority of Shadaloo activity seems to be in southeast Asia, as you know. Particularly Hong Kong. And while British influence has lessened somewhat since the Handover in 1997, we keep a good relationship with our counterparts there. The Chinese Ministry has agreed to this, though they have their own internal problems to deal with."

"Agreed to what, exactly?" Harry asked.

"Harry, you're being sent to Hong Kong, as the British DMLE's liaison with the Hong Kong police," Kingsley said. "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help them investigate, and dismantle, Shadaloo…"

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:

So, there you have it. Harry and Chun Li finally meeting in person, and Harry has an impossible mission…

1. Given that Zoe Wanamaker plays Hooch in the first film, that's hardly surprising.

2. A 'skullet' is what Rimmer calls Shakespeare's hairdo in the Red Dwarf episode Lemons, saying it's basically a bald mullet.