Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Street Fighter. The world did not end on the 21st, however a lot of people found it a reason to act like fools the night before. But the Mayan calendar hype did manage to benefit me in some way, so I can't really complain about it.
Chapter 40: Wheels In Motion
"Naruto wake up."
"Go 'way. It's the weekend Sakura-chan."
"…It's the afternoon. What did you do last night?"
"Intercepted a smuggler's run into Tokyo Bay with Sasuke-teme. Joint mission. Late stakeout."
More work, more school, more work to top off all of the school, and enough training in between all of that to make any passing weekend warrior of a fighter regret their idea of a hobby. That was the basic archetype of Naruto's daily living for two months.
Sasuke had to kill a Triad boss trying to move himself and his product out of Hong Kong off of a tip and a commission from his 'not-master' Gen. On the other hand Naruto had to capture the drugs and bring it to Metro PD off of a payment from a detective that didn't have enough evidence to justify a police raid.
Naruto's job was way more dangerous because the drugs actually had to be intact at the time they were handed over, but with Sasuke running amok to accomplish his mission Naruto's wound up going smoothly.
Collaboration was the spice of life after all.
"Well that explains why you left town so fast after school ended yesterday."
Sakura stood over Naruto's bed dressed for the day while the man himself remained under his covers with a pillow buried over his head to drown out anything that would keep him from his sweet, sweet slumber. As active as he could be when he was actually awake, there was probably no one more difficult to actually rouse into consciousness.
A quick glance at a nearby calendar put Sakura in a pitying mood, thus she figured she could ease Naruto awake. She wanted to go do something fun today, but apparently he had to work last night and he probably hadn't gotten back until dawn.
He hadn't been the only one that had been busy lately. Everyone in their immediate and extended group of friends were hard at work with their own things, all over the world.
Batsu was busy with his free time trying to get his test scores up with the help of his girlfriend, the reason being so that they could get into the same university. It both helped and hurt that unlike him she was actually quite book smart. It was good because she was actually able to help him get better, but it was bad because her school of choice wasn't necessarily easy for guys like him to get into.
Ibuki was actually taking it upon herself to ratchet up her training, all to try and prepare for whatever major final test her village was going to throw her way for her graduation task. She was almost religiously leaving to go back to her village to get to work, but she could oftentimes be caught with her pretty brown eyes resting on Naruto's form sitting in front of her in class when she was certain he wasn't paying attention. Perhaps she required motivational thoughts to keep going with her program?
Karin was doing… something that they couldn't get out of her. All they knew was that she wasn't wasting a minute outside of class to get whatever it was done. Even in class, she seemed to spend every second on her smartphone working on some kind of project that was clearly extremely important. Naruto wasn't even sure if she was sleeping regularly or not. If anyone was an expert on that it would have been him.
E. Honda was still kicking sumo ass and had cleaned up in his most recent tournament a few weeks ago. Ken was still sitting pretty and basically living the dream in California; richer than filthy hell with a hot wife, and nothing to do all day but train, goof off, and run his businesses.
Chun-Li and Guile were apparently back to work in their respective jobs, investigating some trouble that was occurring in South America in a joint operation between Interpol and the U.S. Air Force. There was only so much they could divulge to them due to the nature of their careers, but that sort of thing was basically their jobs to deal with anyway.
Ryu had stopped by in Aohura City for a day or so to see how Sakura was faring with her increasingly grueling training, but as usual he didn't stay for any real sort of time at all. Last any of them had heard from him he was catching a flight out to Australia. What he could possibly do there that would make him a better martial artist no one knew, but if anyone could find it he was definitely the one that could.
Cammy was doing… Cammy things. Basically she trained, watched a lot of TV, ran her choice of Naruto's missions for her own money, and did jobs around and outside of town at her own leisure, and took care of her cat. That was enough to keep her happy.
So everyone was into something, but still no one burned the candle at both ends quite like the hardest working man in mercenary business of questionable legality.
Work was work. It needed to be done and with that there was nothing else to be said. Naruto cared about it more than a lot of other things that went on around him. He cared next to nothing about school, because a diploma was not going to help him do anything he wanted to do. The only reason he went was because all of the people close to him went, and it would have been a shame if he didn't at least graduate high school when he was fully capable of doing such a thing.
Still, working would always come before anything having to do with academia.
"I really hate your job Naruto." Sakura sat down by Naruto on his bed once he readjusted his pillow beneath him, "This isn't good for you to do by yourself." She said, reaching out a hand to run through his hair, "I know you're a ki or chakra juggernaut, but it's got to be tough on your mind. If you got hurt out there who would know about it?"
All Naruto did was mutter tiredly as he allowed Sakura to delicately continue her ministrations. Eventually though, he cracked his eyes open to look up at his best friend, "If you're gonna stay and fret you can lay down too you know. It's fine."
Sakura rolled her eyes but didn't hesitate to slip in next to Naruto, facing the same direction that he was with her back against him, "We're too old to do this anymore." All she heard was Naruto snickering a bit and she forcefully threw one of his arms underneath hers to keep it in place around her stomach, "I mean it. It was inappropriate when we were thirteen in middle school, let alone now."
"I don't want to hear that when you actually got in bed just now." Naruto replied cheekily, shutting his eyes to relax again, "I didn't pull you down here. You can be just as lazy as I can be and you know it."
"It's just your bed. It's huge and comfortable and it always has been. Whenever we took naps at my house we always kicked the wall and fell off of the bed." Sakura defended before going quiet and letting the afternoon tranquility fill the air before not really feeling up to sleeping. She really just wanted to spend some time with her best friend, "Naruto, are you sure I can't get you to think about going to a university?"
"I don't even want to go, and I'd just be wasting the place I was taking." Naruto said, burying his nose against the back of Sakura's head, "That's basically stealing someone else's spot that actually wants to be there. I don't need to."
It was strange how comfortable the two of them were with each other. Such an intimate gesture meant absolutely nothing between the two of them. All it did was get Sakura to relax further, even with a semi-serious topic presented, "I wish you'd consider it though. What are you going to do when we get older?"
"Well what about you? What's Sakura-chan going to do with those straight-As of hers?" He asked, tickling at her stomach until she pinched his arm to get him to stop. She loved it though, otherwise she'd have decked him years ago.
"Be a teacher." Sakura answered honestly, finding it to be maddeningly comfortable where she was. God, Naruto was really warm. She'd anticipated being more active today, not lazing away in a bed. Now she didn't even want to get up, "I've thought about it for a while now. A martial arts teacher. That's what I want to be."
"Like Dan?" Naruto questioned, and she could just feel him grinning against her back at the thought.
"No, not like Dan! Dan's moves are retarded!" Sakura blurted out, face red with embarrassment as she rolled over to face him, "I mean it! I love martial arts Naruto. It's given me so much. It even gave me you. But all the time we only see the dark and evil side of it. It gets such a bad reputation, and I want to do something about it. Maybe if I can get famous like you or Ken or Ryu I can start trying to. I don't know. In my head it's so clear, but when I say it out loud I can't find the words to explain."
"I know what you're saying." Naruto said to ease her worry. And he did understand. Sakura had always looked at the beautiful side of fighting. The infinite number of complex styles and techniques being created every day. The sheer amount of people that they had both met through fighting. The people that they had helped. She was a very idealistic girl, and he liked that, "I don't know why you need to go to college to teach people how to fight, but that's okay."
Apparently Sakura had thought about this quite a bit due to the look on her face as she averted her eyes away from Naruto, "Well I want to be seen as more than just an instructor. If you hadn't noticed most of the people we meet associate fighting with delinquency and crime."
"Yeah, my bad." Naruto said with a guilty expression on his face. There was a good chance he was partially responsible for that, at least in Aohura City.
"No, not because of you. I was thinking about the actual bad guys we've been fighting for years like Bison or Vega." Sakura assured him with a few pats on the cheek before taking a second to think about it, "-But come to think of it the perception of you doesn't really help that mindset. Anyway, I don't think people would take what I'd have to say outside of technique seriously even if I was a great fighter if I didn't have a diploma. Now come on. What does Naruto want to do when he grows up huh?"
Instead of an embarrassed answer the way she had been expecting, Sakura just got a blank look for several moments before Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know. I used to want to go home, and I still want to see if it's possible, but I have no idea what I really want. I can't really be Hokage here. Don't need to be either."
People loved him and cared for him. More people knew his name and more people than he ever would have figured openly acknowledged that he was great at something. That was basically all he had ever wanted out of life before realizing that he cared about something vastly more important than that. Hokage was just the end-all to confirming that he'd achieved all of that, thus it had been the dream.
So what could he actually do here? Could he really be a mercenary for the rest of his life? Was there anything out there that he could do for a living that was better?
"I could call you Hokage." Sakura propositioned with a grin, getting herself closer and more comfortable against him while Naruto had been thinking to himself, "I don't know what makes you a 'fiery shadow' other than the fact that you're a ninja that wears orange, but whatever."
"It doesn't really work like that Sakura-chan." Naruto said with a laugh, wrapping his arms around the girl and getting her to laugh too, "Thanks. I'm still not going to university though." Sakura pouted at him only for Naruto to shut his eyes and try sleeping again, "Night."
"…It's one in the afternoon…" That being said she didn't make any kind of move to get up herself.
XxX
(Rural Village in Kerala, India)
It was the same as it had been for a month.
Even after getting attention to his village to raise the money he had needed for them, the hits just kept coming for Dhalsim. One problem that was solved would just lead into another one, apparently making him another person afflicted with this kind of luck.
He had gotten the necessities that his village needed such as medicines and other goods required for a modern community to survive and thrive. And once he had obtained that there was a whole new issue.
The flow of water into the village had more or less stopped cold. It didn't make any sense.
That was most certainly not good. While they had the money to bring in water to survive with for a while, it was necessary to get the water back soon or there would be no hope. The only saving grace out of everything was that it was not summer yet. If that had been the case it would have been an emergency of catastrophic proportions. It was still an emergency, but not as horrible as it could have been.
What he found miles and miles upstream that was the cause was most certainly not what he had been expecting at all; a dam impeding the progress of the river from properly going forward and reaching his people.
'When was this built?' Dhalsim's white, pupil-less eyes looked onto the monolith strangling water away from his village in shock, something that didn't appear overtly on his face very often, 'I knew nothing of this!'
The land a mile away from the dam on all sides was gated off and guarded with electricity, barbed wire, and sentries, but it didn't matter as it could be seen from that far away downstream. Whatever the meaning of this was, Dhalsim was dead-set on finding out and for once he had no time to waste. He needed answers, and someone needed to come forward and take responsibility for this.
Teleporting himself past the gate and onto the premises he was immediately met by men in strange white uniforms pointing guns at him, "Put down your weapons, take me to whoever is in charge here and none of you will be harmed. This I swear."
Well as can be guessed, that didn't go over so well with the people holding the bloody guns, and they proceeded to open fire. Against someone that could teleport himself out of harm's way you had to get a bit more imaginative than that.
Reappearing well out of the line of fire, Dhalsim knocked several of them out with one extended limb kick, as solid as a swinging steel beam. They were trained, but he was out of this world in regards to being a combatant.
The last man standing from the skirmish turned and shot at him again only for Dhalsim to jump into the air and extend his arms for an overhead swing of twin hammerfists that smashed the sole soldier into the ground, forming a small crater underneath him.
The modest mystic detested fighting, but he was not about to allow himself to be shot at by anyone.
"My apologies." Dhalsim said in a calm and meaningful tone of voice as he walked over to the individual that he had just undoubtedly stuck with numerous medical bills, "I gave you all ample warning that such a thing could happen. Now-." He said, reaching forward to grab hold of the soldier's helmet, throwing it aside before resting his hand on the unconscious man's head, "-Let us see just who you are."
A quick flash of thoughts ran through the head of the man not trained to mentally resist being probed in such a manner, by proxy spilling everything he had worth knowing over to Dhalsim who promptly let go of him after getting what he could.
It was a dam built by the S.I.N. organization, but for what he had no idea. He was unable to learn such even from reading someone's mind. The person that gave him his orders happened to be a slightly higher-ranking grunt. So many interchangeable faces, Dhalsim was certain that he would get nowhere through this method.
The man was a grunt. The lowest of the low in the hierarchy. The soldiers were told nothing worth knowing, even the higher ranking officers. They were just bodies with guns meant to get what the science department needed to work. All he really knew was that he had been trained, given a gun, and paid well to do what he thought would be completely harmless to him. Guarding a dam built without anyone's knowledge upstream from a poor village that could just be steamrolled by a large enough armed group was not particularly a difficult assignment for a paramilitary group.
Was it morally horrendous? Of course it was. But human beings had great capacity for evil, even when it came to the evil of inaction. Most didn't care about what went on around them as long as it didn't adversely affect them, and this most certainly did not. None of these men were local. Not even close.
Maybe that was why they didn't surrender upon seeing and hearing him? Because either they didn't know him, they didn't speak Hindi, or both. Perhaps he should have spoken English instead. He probably would have had a better chance of getting a response aside from a hail of bullets.
But for now he had to leave. He could already sense others coming his way and didn't feel like fighting an outright war without knowing what he was getting himself and his village into. Not directly and not on his own. Taking things into his own hands and his own hands alone would be the actions of a foolish and prideful man. Hurriedly taking a few minutes to wipe the minds of the soldiers that had seen him, Dhalsim teleported off of the premises and started back for home.
There was something he could do, and help that he could request from someone possibly better equipped to get the necessary information on this newest threat to his village. He was not about to set off a possible military response against his village due to his presence there. It was too risky.
A few minutes after his departure, a new platoon of white-uniformed soldiers made their way to the location of the perimeter squad's decimation. They were quick to search and lock down the area, but found no signs of just who or what had beaten the others senseless.
Amongst them Crimson Viper looked around, almost bored at all of it, but she picked up a ki signature through the sensor in her Battle Suit, faint though it was. If a real fighter had been there attacking, regular soldiers might not have been enough.
Actually regular soldiers definitely wouldn't have been enough. There was a reason that no one in S.I.N. told the bottom of the barrel employees anything important; because they weren't particularly reliable in a pinch. But they were still necessary.
The small ki signature traces came from every soldier that was down and out, centered at their heads for some reason. Well that was next to useless, "I hate working so many of these assignments abroad." She said to herself as she ensured that she saved the signature for later in case she ran across it again and could identify just who did this, "…I'll just call Lauren later."
"Well." One of the soldiers adorned with better gear and weaponry than the others said, running up to Viper, "There's no further sign of any intruder. What do you think should we do?" From how jumpy he was he seemed to be anticipating a to-be raid on one of the villages miles away.
"Return to base." Viper ordered without hesitation as she started to head back to the dam, "This place is rather far out from the nearest village. If you idiots want to start an 'investigation' you'll end up razing several surrounding towns to the ground. We don't need that. We continue research on our projects and you continue guard duty, and actually report when you run across something suspicious. Simple as that."
It was not a particularly popular opinion as far as the muscle went, "Feh, and what makes the head of the 'Battle Suit' project think that they have any authority over the military branch of S.I.N. when it comes to something like this?" He said, getting some snickers out of his men nearby, "You should go back inside and worry about your little science projects. We'll handle the important things."
Viper didn't say anything as she walked away, at first just adjusting some kind of switching mechanism visible only to her on her suit's special left glove. Without warning she drew her fist back and without turning around delivered a heavy punch to the ground, "Seismic Hammer!"
The second her fist connected from where she had been, the ground underneath the disrespectful soldier of fortune exploded, shooting him fifty feet into the air like a ragdoll. All the others could do was look on in shock and awe as Viper continued to walk away as if she had never done a thing.
Pulling the glove tighter on her hand after using it she didn't even bother gracing the other idiot soldiers with a glance in their direction, "Do you want to know why the military branch takes orders from the technological branch instead of the other way around? It's because in S.I.N. the science is the power. Intelligence and development is our strength. And you all just don't measure up on that front. You barely meet the requirements physically. Which is why you're here, to look tough and to point your little guns while we make the real difference."
She shot an even-tempered glance at one man that took a step back just in case he had done something to earn her ire.
All Viper did was scoff. As if she would waste her time beating up the nobodies for kicks when there was real work to be done, "Please. This suit has been tested enough times against fools like you, in greater numbers, with guns. I wouldn't waste the effort running a trial I've already completed when I've got new ones that need to be performed. So shut up and do your jobs, because my superior is infinitely scarier than yours."
Their superior just twitched haplessly in the heap that he had been left in. It was safe to say that there would be no dispute from him anytime soon.
XxX
(A Few Days Later – Aohura City, Japan – Genhanten)
"Why do you all keep coming here?" Sasuke asked in an exasperated manner as he came down from his office to watch an employee drop a check directly on a table populated by Naruto and all of his similarly-aged friends seemingly fresh out of school for the most part, "I don't get it."
Batsu was the first to speak up with a shrug of his shoulders as he was quick to pass the bill to his left, away from him and his girlfriend, "Because the food here is great." What did he want them to say? The place was good. The fact that he treated most of them like dog crap on the bottom of a shoe was irrelevant as long as the restaurant was that awesome.
"The real question is why you tolerate our presence to begin with if you don't want us eating here." Cammy said, wearing clothes that were reserved for her, "I mean, I was of the mindset that owners of businesses reserved the right to refuse service to anyone they wanted."
Sasuke muttered a response under his breath as Karin pulled out a black card and handed it over to his employee to pay for the meal without a care. Seriously, if she of all people happened to be eating it instead of personally catered food it had to be pretty good.
"I didn't quite catch that." Sakura said to nearby Kei in regards to what Sasuke had said, having honestly not heard him, "What was that?"
With a smirk, Karin folded her hands to neatly rest her chin on them while waiting for her card to come back, "I believe Uchiha-san was more than likely referring to how we usually pay for quite a lot of food when we come here." Naruto, Batsu, and Ibuki's combined faults since the three of them combined were a culinary terror. The three of them were still eating even though the check had come, "…By 'we' I am of course referring to myself."
A scoff came from the only blond male at the table in Naruto, "Me, Cam, Sakura-chan, and Batsu all have the money to pay for ourselves you know. It's not our fault you always pay for everyone else." He deadpanned in between bites of his food, "You just like to show off a lot Rin-Rin." He wasn't really complaining since he was the last person that could talk about having an ego. He was just making a point.
Karin's smirk dropped at the sound of her drunk-times nickname and she shot a slight glare Naruto's way. Thank goodness no one else knew about that, "I would prefer it if you did not call me by that insufferable name Naruto-san."
"No." Naruto said, sending a somewhat challenging look her way, "Why? I think it's cute." Karin didn't have anything to say to that, thus she just settled for trying to hide her reddening face under the guise of a look that made her look more adorable than threatening given the situation.
"…Wish I had a nickname…" Ibuki grumbled to herself, chopsticks held in her mouth as she continued to finish her meal. She needed that energy for training that evening in her village. She couldn't afford to be jealous because being jealous required that precious energy… or did it?
"Your name is hard to screw with though." Naruto defended, having heard her, "I've tried, but I can't get anything that sounds natural or even halfway decent. Besides, if you actually want a nickname it defeats half my purpose of giving people them."
Who thinks that thoroughly in regards to doling out nicknames? Usually a guy that can get bored and has trouble paying attention to monotonous things pretty easily. Besides, counting his own drifting thoughts along with his clones that had idle thoughts of their own, Naruto had enough random thoughts to fill a notebook on any given week.
As everything continued to proceed, Sasuke eventually found an opening to grab Naruto and drag him off to the stairs that led up to his office where he finally let go. Naruto didn't say anything because if it wasn't in a pitched battle between the two of them Sasuke wouldn't try to hurt him. Thus he figured he was safe for the most part. As safe as he could be anyway.
It was kind of strange though, "So what's up? I'm assuming you had a reason for that. And I'm also guessing that you Sharingan-screwed everyone's head into not asking why you pulled me off somewhere."
Whatever it was seemed to have Sasuke pacing up and down the stairs, "Listen…" Sasuke said, palming his face to try and keep his cool as it seemed like there was something quite difficult bothering him, "Every fiber of my being wants to puke at once when I say this, but I need your heee…. I need your heeeelll…" He sound like he was dry heaving and instinctually blocking something.
"You need my help?" Naruto ventured to ask with a raised eyebrow. Was it really that hard for him to ask for assistance?
"Yes." Sasuke said, looking away up the stairs trying to regain his aloof coolness, "That."
"Well what is it?"
"Someone's coming in here today, and you and I need to put them down. Hard."
"What?"
They needed to kill someone, and Sasuke knew they were coming in here well in advance? No, it wasn't going to go down that casually. How could it? Naruto didn't even know who he was being asked to help kill.
Sasuke could see the apprehension all over Naruto's face and decided to try and make things go a little smoother by explaining himself, "This really isn't a good person dobe. You know I'm picky with who I assassinate. Well this person is an assassin too, with way more kills than me, and I can guarantee you when they get here they're going to screw everything over for the both of us. It's the most dangerous person in Asia, period."
From what he could tell Sasuke was dead serious about this, and that was enough to keep Naruto's attention, "When do they get here?" Sasuke just held up two fingers, getting Naruto to go wide-eyed, "Two hours or two minutes? Both are bad, but one sucks way worse than the other."
"Minutes. But I know better, so they might already be here."
"In the restaurant? Eating? Now? How am I going to know who it is?"
"You'll know who it is when I try to kill them first. Now let's go see."
With that, Naruto and Sasuke went back down the stairs and began looking through his restaurant, carefully scoping out all of the patrons. Naruto kept close with a kunai ready to be drawn right from his sleeve if the need arose.
Eventually red eyes locked onto the old hands of someone purposefully trying to hold up a menu to grab Sasuke's attention, and he didn't waste a second, "Get the fuck out of my restaurant Gen or I'll kill you, you old bastard!" Sasuke shouted before preparing to launch a deadly weapon his way… right until he saw Akira sitting with him, "Uh, Akira, what are you doing here?"
Lowering the menu, the old man sitting with her smirked at Sasuke from behind his wispy grey beard. He had white hair and a very stern and superior look on my face and wore baggy purple Chinese clothes of the archetypal kung fu practitioner with a red sash around his waist.
Whoever he was, the killing intent flying off of Sasuke due to his presence might as well have been tangible.
"Oh, you know this girl?" Somehow everyone listening knew damn well that Gen knew that Sasuke knew her, "She so generously gave me a ride from the train station." Gen said condescendingly, much to Sasuke's growing ire, "And what do you mean your restaurant? This is my restaurant. My name is in it. I just have you running it."
Sasuke actually stopped for a moment and looked at Akira with a raised eyebrow. He wanted to ask just how in the hell Gen managed to get her to be his ride from the train station when he was certain that he didn't know who she was to begin with before ever arriving. Did Gen even own a phone, even a landline? Ugh, wily old man logic was just something else.
Naruto tapped Sasuke on the shoulder and whispered to him, "Sasuke, who the hell is that, and why the hell do you want to kill an old man?" He certainly didn't seem to be the sweet old man variety, but still, "What's going on here?"
"I'm the boy's master." Gen said as he stood up from his seat and shuffled over to Naruto and a fuming Sasuke, "You could say he owes me… well, everything."
"Like hell you are, and like hell I do. You basically kidnapped me! I'm gonna put a pillow over your head and stab your face at midnight." Sasuke threatened once Gen was in reach. God, that old man made Sasuke angry. Even Naruto didn't piss him off that much. Naruto got one death threat, during a fight, and that was it, "Why are you here? I'd rather Yang and Yun be here! Go back to Hong Kong!"
"I'm taking a vacation." Gen said, casually walking past Sasuke to stare directly at Naruto for several seconds, "…Hm." Without saying a word to Naruto he walked past him as well and headed for the stairs, "I'll be taking your room. You can prepare the guest room for yourself for my stay."
Sasuke just glared at his back as he left, wishing that he could make him spontaneously combust with eye contact… preferably in black flames that would burn for seven days straight. With a sigh, he adjusted his clothes and addressed the rest of the patrons of the restaurant telling them that Gen was the owner.
Meanwhile both Naruto and Akira were nearby with their jaws hanging, for the exact same reason. Akira didn't have it in her to speak up, but Naruto did, "…What the fuck just happened? Did I just watch you get punked out?" Sasuke had probably put people in genjutsu comas for less.
"If I fought him in here I couldn't do it without destroying the building" Sasuke defended, finally calming back down entirely, "Apparently he has leukemia. Feh." Gen was way too strong to be any kind of sick. The old man seemed like an old hermit that would never die, "Too much trouble trying to kill him here. I'll do it though. Don't you worry about it."
At this point, Naruto, Sasuke, and Akira had walked over to the table where Naruto's friends had been, and all of them had seen and overheard everything. "Now I'm not the kind of guy that propagates murder or anything…" Naruto said as he sat back down between Cammy and Ibuki, "…But you can't just challenge him and kill him now if he makes you mad enough to freak out in public?"
"Yeah." Batsu followed up in turn, "Aren't you one-sixth his age at closest?"
Hinata had to chide her boyfriend. Really, that whole rampant disrespect thing was not going to work in his advantage outside of street fighting, but she didn't know how to make him cut it out, "Batsu-kun be nice. You don't say things like that."
Ibuki hadn't been able to take her eyes off of Gen since seeing him, and even though he was gone her eyes still lingered on the last place where he had been, "None of you know who that was? That was Gen, one of the last true big legends of martial arts. The legendary underground assassin. He's one of the strongest men in the entire world! He's beyond winning tournaments and titles! Every student in the village is told to run if it looks like we have to fight him!"
That old man was really that strong? No way. He didn't look weak by any means, but to still make Sasuke think twice about starting a fight with him he had to be some kind of amazing.
The name sounded familiar to Sakura, which was strange since she only remembered obscure things when they had to do with Ryu. Wait, that was it, "I think I saw him in the original World Warrior Tournament." She said in remembrance, "He won his first fight, but then something happened to make him lose didn't he?"
"That stupid First World Warrior Tournament?" Sasuke asked with a roll of his eyes before making his point, "He didn't lose. He fought Yang and Yun's uncle for fun and then the officials forced him out after they found out how sick he was. The whole thing bored him to death anyway. For the best in the world everyone there was so weak except for Sagat. The whole thing sucked except for the finals. Me and the dobe could have beaten most of the competitors back then."
All of this struck a chord with Karin, who had been wondering about something for a while. She'd wanted Naruto to be the best fighter in the world so that he could achieve the potential that she knew he had. And she thought he'd done that. Well, had mostly done it by virtue of fighting his way to the finals of the Second World Warrior Tournament and battling to a disputed draw with Sasuke.
And now she was learning that there was something past it. She thought she knew about what constituted real fighting. But the true best fighters in the world didn't give a damn about titles, accolades, and tournament victories. So what was she having him do for all of that time?
She should have realized it sooner, especially with all of the things that had happened to them. Real fighting. Real martial arts, it didn't happen in arenas and on stages with rules and regulations, and thousands upon millions able to observe it.
The real stuff took place where no one saw it. Where no one other than the participants and maybe a select few would ever be able to tell the tale, and where the stakes were higher than money or trophies or cheers and jeers.
"I should have known that." Karin said quietly to herself as her eyes moved over to Naruto, 'He knew that.' Even if he never said it. Actually he did say it. The first thing he said when they had started all of this was that he didn't care about being known as the best fighter.
It was why Naruto seemed to enter every single tournament with a sense of detachment other than the determination that he was not going to get beaten no matter who his opponent was.
There were more important things than proving he was the best to others. Outside of the Sasuke match he never cared about a single tournament scenario he had been in more than any of the battles he had outside of them, even the ones that she had coaxed him into entering. Even in the last tournament he took part in only because he entered due to an outside reason that never really came to pass.
The real fights occurred when it was life or limb on the line, either his or someone else's. When there was something vital up for chance.
Naruto didn't know why he could see Karin smiling so serenely at him and wondered what she was thinking about for such a rare thing to happen, but it was still very beautiful when he saw it directed his way. He smiled back at her and all she could do was shake her head at him, confusing him a bit, but she didn't verbalize what her intent was.
After all of the real deathmatches she had seen and somewhat been a part of, where real things had been on the line including her life, she should have seen it sooner. And that also meant that the strongest fighters on Earth weren't those that took part even in the World Warrior Tournament.
It explained the strength of people like M. Bison (whom they didn't know the whereabouts of), and to an even greater extent the Akuma person that had appeared and disappeared just as quickly without a trace (they definitely didn't know where he was). There were probably even more.
That was what Ryu meant when he kept saying that he wasn't ready to train a student, because what right did someone like him have to do such a thing when there were still so many that could defeat him. It was what Ken meant when he said that being the U.S. Champion wasn't enough to mean anything, because against that level of fighter he was still subpar.
"Sagat before his fight with Ryu was on that level." Sasuke mentioned seriously, "The one you saw after then, before he died, that was just a shadow of the real man." The one Naruto fought was not the true 'God of Muay Thai.'
Sagat had never recovered properly from how Ryu ripped his chest open. His woes had nothing to do with his mindset or lack of battle ferocity. Talent was talent. He merely never stopped training and fighting after his defeat. It was as simple as that. Days after suffering the wound that should have killed him, it was reopened in the opening moments of a fight with Adon that he technically lost, and he still continued to fight, eventually losing another match to Dee Jay that gave the musical kickboxer some fame.
Ryu's lucky Metsu Shoryuuken nearly killed him in the most grisly manner imaginable, and for three years afterwards until his death he never took time to rest away from fighting or training. He broke his own body with improper care when he could have continued to grow in strength.
"I'm sure most of you knew that though. But if you want to know how strong Gen is? Gen can beat Sagat in his prime… as he is now."
XxX
(South America – Brazil – Amazonas Region – Amazon Rainforest)
"This is like searching for a needle in a needlestack." Guile complained as he and Chun-Li were led through the jungle by a guide that their respective organizations had hired for them to help with their investigation into some rather nasty rumors, "I'm a pilot. I fly planes. And yet this is the second time in two years I've been stuck stomping my way through the wild without a clue."
"Just your luck." Chun-Li replied, though she wasn't much of a fan of this kind of legwork either, "Look, the energy discharge that your government picked up originated from the Amazon. Rumors led us here to investigate first, about the disappearing fighters. Sounds like a Shadaloo thing right?"
It did sound like a Shadaloo thing. A disappearance of local fighters spoken of having the capabilities to utilize ki, and a big expulsion of energy was basically the bread and butter that had been their modus operandi in the past. Old dogs didn't learn new tricks after all, so why would Shadaloo?
This was the only lead they had these days as well. Balrog had slipped away after his tournament defeat, and Chun-Li never had hard evidence of him committing crimes in the name of Shadaloo. Being 'security' wasn't necessarily a crime. Vega had long been dead after Naruto had killed him in Thailand during the raid on Bison's Psycho Drive. Birdie had been arrested in Hong Kong, but he was absolute bottom-of-the-barrel enforcer muscle. And even he'd been killed while in custody.
The only one basically unaccounted for was M. Bison himself. Cammy had seen him during the tournament, but he never showed himself. They were certain that he was probably the only one there that could have killed Sagat, and Blanka claimed that he had seen purple energy emitting from the jungle that attracted him to the dead Sagat's location, but nothing was found of the Shadaloo overlord.
For all intents and purposes he was still at large.
While they weren't going to be obsessive in their searching, when something like this came up they still had to do something about it. They were the only ones equipped with all of the resources to do so and with the experience to tough it out through whatever may come their way.
"Here." Their guide told them as they started coming up to the location that he had been meaning to lead them to the entire time, "This is where the light in the sky came from a few weeks ago. No one in the village came out in this direction afterwards." And who could blame them? The able-bodied fighters in the region were disappearing without a trace and then a strange thing like that occurs out of the blue?
Guile gave the Brazilian man a pat on the shoulder as he walked ahead to take a look, "Thanks." He might have been getting paid, but it was still a pretty big risk to be out there without knowing anything about what was happening.
Both he and Chun-Li moved forward through the brush until they got sight of an extremely disturbing sight. Littering the forest floor were bodies of mutilated animals and human beings. Weeks old. And that wasn't the thing that was the most surprising.
"What happened here?" Chun-Li asked, covering her nose and mouth with her hand as she and Guile looked around. Their guide wasn't going to get any closer, but he was going to hang around to see them back. Once again; no one was blaming him, "It's like parts of their bodies blew up like firecrackers…" Would throwing up have been a weakness at that point? Because that smell was horrible.
"Yeah, it's pretty grisly." Guile said, lifting a camera to take pictures. They needed to come back with something tangible to prove to their superiors that they had found something, "But I don't think it's Shadaloo's style to kidnap fighters just to kill them like this. And what's with the animals? The same thing happened to them." He took a few more pictures of the scene and then sighed, "Ugh… we've got to radio this one in. I don't think it's too late for an autopsy at this point."
"Please do." Chun-Li said, cringing at the heaps of dead around. There was absolutely no sign of explosive use, "I really don't know just what did this, but I can't wait to find out what it was. Or can I? I'm not really sure at this point."
Things were so much simpler back when she was busting up Shadaloo drug and weapon deals around Hong Kong for Interpol. Success was a real bitch to the status quo sometimes.
XxX
(Nightfall – Naruto's Apartment)
Laying in the dark of his room, Naruto stared up at his hand that was extended up at the ceiling and focused enough to form a Rasengan in his palm to light it up. He'd been thinking for most of the night, and his afternoon training after his meal with his friends wound up with him having his mind elsewhere the entire time.
Basically he had been told that in a tournament broadcasted on a world stage, with fighters being billed as the best anywhere, the best hadn't been there. Sasuke had basically alluded that if Gen had been in the tournament, they would have lost. He didn't say it, but he didn't have to. The things that he did say, and his actions, expressed as much. And the sharpness in the old man's eyes when he seemed to size Naruto up for a moment had been powerful.
It wasn't the kind of look that Naruto was used to, in the way that people were trying to gauge just how easy it would be to beat him, mapping out the entire fight in their head from what they thought of him. That kind of thing was usually all over everyone's face when they thought it. Gen was different. He didn't know what it was exactly, but it just was.
It was kind of hard to keep going on about being the strongest ninja in the world when things like this kept popping up.
"That old man could kill you." The abrupt voice of the Kyuubi in his head broke Naruto's concentration and forced him to drop his Rasengan, "I'm not saying that to mess with you this time. Using my chakra the way you have been wouldn't be enough on its own to defeat him. Overpowering someone like that isn't the way to win. I can assure you that nothing he can do will match the sheer destruction that you're capable of, but that by itself isn't strength."
"That sounds weird coming from you."
"Yes… well, I have been defeated by humans on multiple occasions that were entirely unable to match my power and used more clever methods to get it done." Kyuubi replied sardonically, "I would know something about it."
"I guess." Naruto said before sighing. The kind of mindset that created wasn't really productive. He needed to be better, and it didn't have anything to do with one of the strongest people alive appearing out of the blue. A lot of bad things could have happened back at the tournament, but they didn't. Anything could happen to anyone he knew at any time and he'd be damned if someone got as close to hurting them as Bison did to Cammy before he disappeared again, "So do you have any ideas on how to make my jutsu idea work? Because I don't."
"The idea is quite a difficult concept, but I have had time to think on it since I've woken up and learned what you're trying to do." Kyuubi said. That was the thing ever since Naruto had suppressed his dark side. Kyuubi had been a lot more receptive to productive conversation. It was still pretty frosty in its attitude toward him, but their relationship was better than it had been when he was younger. It was better than it had been before Akuma had cut them off as a matter of fact, "I think I have an idea, but if it doesn't work it'll be stupid, even for you."
Naruto just kept staring up at his ceiling, resting his hands behind his head as he conversed with the monster in his body, "The idea for half of the things I wound up creating were stupid, but they all work." After hundreds of failures, but that was all part of the game of creation, "Come on, what do you have?"
"When someone uses ki against you, I can reverse your chakra flow and restart it, sort of like how you learned how to temporarily stop your heart so your clones could fool people easier. Reversing the flow at the instant hostile ki touches your palm will allow you to more or less pull the attack into your body since it will be flowing with the attack into your tenketsu."
Naruto wished that the Kyuubi could see the look on his face, but he was sure that his intent shined through via his tone, "That's a complete load."
"I can do something that simple! I've been randomly screwing with your control for years for fun!" Kyuubi roared in Naruto's head, ringing his skull with the sound of his voice before he went back into explanation mode, "However the timing is the problem. If you screw up the timing of me switching the direction of your flow you won't block anything and you'll take the attack head-on, so you know… practice or you'll get your arm blown off."
That was easy enough to understand. If Naruto and Kyuubi's timing happened to be off Naruto would get blown away. That wasn't too different from what had been happening the rest of the time anyway when he tried to discover a way to use his idea, only now there was a chance that it would actually work if he could do it right.
He'd have to create a new hand-seal or something to signal Kyuubi to screw with his chakra if it was really possible to do so. It probably was, since Kyuubi's chakra was constantly interacting with his own. If getting pissed could result in his body being taken over involuntarily why couldn't he allow some kind of activity with his chakra to be done of his own free will?
"That's half of the problem though. Starting your chakra over again fast enough to send it back is the other half." What? Send it back? All he wanted was a way to negate foreign attacks. That was it, "You see, if my timing is off on righting your chakra flow or if I don't do it at all your insides are going to get scrambled. You can't just take an attack and hold it, you have to redirect it and let it go." Whoa. What? "I have to do that anyway, because if I don't put your chakra back on the right direction of flow your control will be shot to hell, like you humans writing with your left hand instead of your right… or the other way. I don't pay attention to that trifle for most of you."
Naruto thought long and hard about trying to practice such a thing and finally came up with something that summed up what he had been pondering for most of that time, "Why does everything new I learn how to do have to be that dangerous? If I do it wrong I take an attack or I turn my insides into jelly. Maybe I should stick to dodging, even if it would be a pretty nasty surprise."
"Come up with your signal and just train with it until our timing is perfect. It's all a matter of practice, like I said originally."
"Are you actually helping me with something?"
"Yes. Now shut up about it. You have a guest."
A knock came at Naruto's bedroom door as Naruto rolled his eyes. That wasn't a guest. That was just Cammy. He already knew she was coming, he could hear her footsteps outside.
The petite little femme peered in, trying to see him in the darkness, "Naruto. There's someone outside looking for you." Oh, so that must have been what the Kyuubi had been referring to, "I didn't know what you wanted me to do so I came to get you first. He knows you're here already and he's willing to wait."
Naruto sat up on his bed and grabbed a kunai off of the nightstand before Cammy put a hand on his to keep him from picking it up, "No trouble?"
"Not that I can think of." Cammy replied before pulling Naruto up and out to the front door of the apartment, "After all he's never hurt us before, but I can't possibly imagine why he's here." She said as she opened the door to the outside to reveal Dhalsim sitting there, hovering slightly off of the ground as he meditated, "I hadn't even looked outside of the peephole before he spoke as if he knew I was there."
Upon the door being opened to the domicile of the yellow-haired duo, Dhalsim stood back up on his own two feet and his pupil-devoid white eyes opened up as looked over at the two people he hadn't seen since the first night of the Second World Warrior Tournament.
Naruto looked confused, and his confusion was shared in by Cammy as to just what Dhalsim was doing there. Japan was kind of out of the way from anywhere a holy man in India would need to go, "Uh, you want to sit down?" Naruto asked, noticing now that they were inside in the light that Dhalsim was actually sweating and looked exhausted, "Bad flight?"
"No flight." Dhalsim responded, taking Naruto's offer to sit down with a bow. Cammy pulled out a seat in the kitchen area for him while Naruto went to get him a bottle of water to drink, "Thank you."
"What do you mean 'no flight?'" Naruto asked as he gave Dhalsim his drink and went over to sit on the back of his couch next to Cammy to listen, "You aren't telling me you took a ship here from India? Dhalsim that had to have taken weeks."
"It took a total of six hours to reach Aohura City, Japan, and an extra hour to locate your unique aura to find you." Dhalsim explained, taking a deep drink before he continued, "I travelled through the astral plane to get here. It is the most effective method of long-distance travel for me when I am in a hurry."
Naruto palmed his face, and even Cammy's eye twitched at the thought of someone being able to teleport anywhere they knew the location of if they so desired it, thus proving just how off-putting knowledge like that was. Even Bison couldn't do that to the best of their knowledge. What kind of crap was that?
It took a moment, but surprisingly Cammy was the one to address this, "You have the ability to travel anywhere in the world, wherever you like, whenever you like, just like that?" It took six hours according to him, but it really should have taken way longer given the distance he traveled, "I don't even know what to say about that."
She wasn't the only one, "I'm so glad you're not evil." Naruto said with a deadpan stare, "Because that is the creepiest thing I've ever heard anyone tell me out loud in my life. Seriously, that just edges out the Santa Claus stuff that Sakura-chan told me about that Christmas holiday when we were kids."
Like hell someone would come down his chimney and break into his house once a year to leave stuff. Let alone a big guy in red that spent every other day of the year in one of the most desolate places on the planet using what basically amounted to inhuman (and unpaid as far as he was told) labor to recreate literally anything else in the world that could be desired as a modern gift who had the ability to traverse the entire globe in a period of 24 hours, staying ahead of the sunlight and carrying an infinite amount of things on flying excuses for venison.
Naruto didn't even know many people that owned a chimney, which made the tale extra shifty. It was the original reason why younger Naruto got reinforced doors, crash-proof windows, and made the escape hole out of his apartment he and Ibuki used just in case, because preteen Naruto was superstitious to an extremely chary degree.
From his own short experience in the ninja world most legends were actually true, none of them ever wound up being very positive to those they were passed down to, and in his defense he really hadn't known better yet. He hadn't even been in Japan for six months at that point, so it very well could have been true.
He basically spent the first Christmas he ever had at Sakura's house holding a kunai and staying wide awake all night long. He got a present the next morning though, so that was cool. But that was whole 'nother story.
"I don't see what any of this has to do with my presence here." Dhalsim said, having taken the time that the teen pair had used to mentally scream at themselves about his ability to go anywhere he wanted.
"It has a lot to do with it since you apparently teleported here." Naruto said, getting an interested Cammy to nod in agreement, "What is that like anyway? Do you have to walk or run through that astral plane place like it's a spacial bridge to wherever you pop out at?"
"Is it something along the lines of a distorted sense of space and time or a pocket dimension?" Cammy inquired, "I've seen things like that on some of those animated shows on TV."
"Do you even have to do anything at all after you activate it or do you just pick a place and go? Can you sleep through it like a flight if it's far enough away? Ooh! Can you get stuck in it?"
"How much ki does it take to travel this far? You look exhausted."
"Please stop asking questions." Dhalsim said in his normal flat voice before getting to the point of his visit. If he let things go as they were who knew when the two would run out of questions about teleportation. He clearly did not see his special ability that he had possessed for years as something so groundbreaking. He did not have the viewpoint of two teenagers either, "I need your assistance."
Naruto pointed at himself and blinked, "You need my help?" Not that he had a problem with giving it, but still, "Well, okay. I would have helped anyway, but I owe you after all for the Kyuubi stuff. Sorry about evil-me almost killing your mind while you were in my head by the way."
Dhalsim held up a hand to stay the apology, "No need. But there is something troubling my village that I require powerful help for. Will you listen to my story?"
"Of course." It should have gone without saying. Dhalsim had more than earned Naruto having his back if that was what he desired. That man was an honorary comrade as far as he was concerned, even if he didn't associate with any of the rest of his friends, "But can I call some people first? Just in case."
"We can go to them now if you would wish." Dhalsim said, standing up after finishing his water off, "I've recovered enough energy to return and reach the people that you want to find. For assistance I presume."
Oh. Well, he had been walking around town for a while looking for his home, so that had to give him some recovery time. And he forgot that Dhalsim was eerily perceptive, "Uh, Cam? I'm going to be gone for a little while." He said as he went to grab a ready-made travel pack from his room, "Do you want to go?"
She shook her head as she watched him come back out, "I'll be fine alone." Cammy assured him with a small smile. Someone needed to stay behind and watch the house and the kitten. Cammy wasn't partial to fighting without a need for it anyway, "I'll call Sakura and tell her not to bother coming to wake you up for school."
Giving Cammy's thigh a squeeze as a wordless thanks as he walked past her, Naruto moved over to Dhalsim, "So how are we going to do this? I don't really know anything about travelling through the astral plane or whatever and I don't think I can pick it up in five minutes if it took you at least twenty years."
Dhalsim rested his hand on Naruto's head and shut his own eyes, "Just stand still and relax as I reach deep inside of you and grab hold of your essence."
"..." Naruto.
"..." Cammy.
"..." Kyuubi.
"..." Naruto could only look back at Cammy who also didn't know quite how to take that either before he finally found it in him to say something, "I... need an adult?"
In that stretch of time, Dhalsim had found the two people in Japan that Naruto would have first chosen to take with him and opened his solid white eyes while generating power, "I AM AN ADULT! Yogaaa-!" He then vanished out of the apartment with Naruto in tow.
XxX
(Meanwhile – Elsewhere in Aohura City)
Gen was a salty old jerk and Sasuke was going to find a way to kill him before he left if it was the last thing he did. It was as simple as that. How strong he was didn't matter, because he'd been clawing up that icy peak for years. Now he was on his turf as opposed to the other way around… even though Sasuke was only used to Aohura City for a few months.
He had to think of all of his advantages and make a plan to fight that son of a bitch, because his time was now and Gen's time was up! He fucked up by leaving Hong Kong to mess with him, and it was time to prove it! By killing him! Upstairs from his own restaurant!
Treacherous thoughts aside, Sasuke really needed to get out of there or he would have lost it and done something foolish. Gen had really taken his room/office over, and it pissed Sasuke off to no end. Where did he get off, other than just the obvious fact that he could do it because the lease to the property was in his name?
To that end he had taken a walk outside at night and had bumped into Akira at the store getting ingredients for her and her brother's dinner that night. That was what he assumed she was doing, because she barely spoke other than giving him a greeting.
He wished he could have used her as a sounding board for ideas on how to use his abilities to finally put it all together and successfully take out Gen, but he didn't want her to be at risk for being an accessory to murder because he was going to smoke that old man somehow!
That kind of fate was fine for Naruto though. Who cared whether or not he was an accessory to murder? Sasuke certainly didn't. He'd have been fine and could have fled the country. No normal cop could ever arrest Uzumaki Naruto, so making a run for it was always an option. Chun-Li would probably pursue him to the ends of the globe for it since they were friends, but whatever.
A nudge to his elbow by Akira holding on to a set of bags got his attention away from his perfidious thoughts. Looking over to her he saw her smiling slightly in a thankful manner as they kept walking back to where she originally parked her bike to go shopping, "Don't thank me. I was walking around anyway and we ran into each other. I didn't do anything other than watch you buy food."
It was probably the quietest shopping trip ever shared by two people in recorded history.
Akira shook her head a single time and once again didn't say anything, directing her attention back to finding her motorcycle in the parking lot again. She didn't need to hear him say anything really positive. He somewhat enjoyed her presence and that was enough for her.
She'd seen him outright ignore other girls that came to Genhanten just trying to get a look at him and maybe spark something. He never even gave them the time of day. On the other hand he had been extremely patient while she'd been getting things for herself and Daigo despite the fact that he had no stake in what she had wound up purchasing.
Other than the strange old man staying in Genhanten that had somehow gotten her number and convinced her to give him a ride to the restaurant from the train station, it had been a pretty good day.
At least until they reached the off-street parking area between two adjacent buildings and found someone sitting on her prized possession that was her motorcycle, "Hey!" That had been the loudest that Sasuke had ever heard Akira speak on anything without her decked out in full biker gear.
Sitting casually, legs both on one side of Akira's bike was a rather lovely young woman slightly older than the two of them, looking at them with a devious smile and dancing pink eyes. She wore loose and baggy white trousers open on the insides of her thighs with purple tights on underneath, held up with a black and purple belt wrapped around her waist thrice. She also had a black and purple breastplate with eight black straps that wrapped around to her back and pink gloves.
Her fingernails and toenails were painted a bright pink and her dark brown hair was set in two horn-like adornments with pink ribbons on the top of her head and two bangs framing both sides of her face, "Well, I thought someone like you would be harder to catch outside of that restaurant of yours. I didn't think you were the type for dates."
Sasuke ignored the 'date' remark altogether as Akira fumed silently next to him. Whether it was for the new arrival's crack about them being on a date, or because she was sitting on Akira's bike Sasuke didn't know. Nor did he particularly care at the moment.
What mattered was that someone looking for him, "Why were you looking for me of all people? That's not really smart."
"Well I have more targets in this town." The woman continued to say as she hopped off of the bike. Even in such a small movement it was so quick and dexterous, "…But you were the easiest to find with any real ki to you, so I picked you first to scope you out. Aren't you lucky?"
Sasuke's eyes drifted down to the girl's feet to see a small view of them underneath the bottoms of her baggy white pants. She was barefoot with the exception of foot garments worn mostly by kick-centric practitioners of competitive martial arts, "Hm." He had nothing to say. If someone wanted a fight with him he could show them just how bad of an idea that really was.
The dark smirk on her face just grew at the sight of Sasuke slipping into a base fighting stance to face her, "Hah, right past the foreplay and straight to the action eh? Not even gonna buy me dinner first?" She jested freely, "What kind of gentleman are you?"
"The kind that'll let you make the first move."
"Ooh. I take that back. Chivalrous. I'll take you up on that." With one move the strange woman spun around into a low wide stance with one foot underneath Akira's racing bike. Without missing a beat she lifted it up with one leg and with the other she kicked it away, aiming it at the wall instead of at a person. The heavy two-wheeled vehicle slammed off of the brick with harsh impact and landed with a crash through the windshield of a parked car in the congested lot, "Whoops. That was quite a machine wasn't it? It looked expensive."
Akira clenched her fists and dropped her bags before rushing forward speedily. Sasuke wasn't able to stop her as he was so stunned at her knee-jerk reaction. Apparently the quickest way to piss her off was to mess with her ride.
"Senshuubu (Cyclone Dance)!" Akira launched a low-aimed spinning kick at the perpetrator of the destruction of her property, sliding skillfully across the pavement speedily. All the offending woman did was beckon her forward challengingly, giggling at the prospect of Akira actually hurting her.
Sasuke could swear he saw a pink gleam from her left eye before she moved faster than he could see without his Sharingan that he hadn't activated. Akira didn't even know where her enemy had moved to at first until she heard a taunting whistle that directed her attention to where she was sitting bored on top of a car, "Is that it? I was told that this town was a hotspot for ki-adepts."
She did that to Akira, who hadn't been moving slow by any measure. Akira hadn't telegraphed her movement for a second until she actually threw her kick, and it hadn't even come close to hitting.
'This is not good.' Sasuke thought to himself as he then decided that no chances could be taken and he activated his Sharingan.
She wanted a ki attack? Well Akira was mad enough to oblige her, and if it blew a hole into her in the process that would have just been too bad. She wasn't as adept as others, but she knew how to fire a shot, and that was all she needed to shut this girl up.
Akira clasped her riding gloved hands before pulling them apart to spark a blue ball of ki that grew to the size of a volleyball. Daigo's was stronger and yellow in the color of its intensity due to him being stronger than her, but hers was faster than his, "Kikou Kai (Spirit Cultivation Cluster)!" She shoved her arms out to send her attack flying at the strange woman sitting on the car roof with the speed of a cannonball.
The woman's eyes lit up as she saw the attack coming, and the moment it left Akira's hands she planted her feet underneath her from her seated position on the roof to jump back and into the air. Akira's attack ripped the roof clean off of the car and the next three cars behind it, but it still missed amazingly enough.
"This city might be fun after all!" The woman shouted to herself laughingly before spinning once in the air and somehow changing her trajectory to swoop down at Akira like an eagle striking, leading with her leg that she used to initiate a barrage of three fast, alternating, booming kicks that nailed Akira in the face and chest, "Shinkusen (Flash of Suffering)!"
The last kick sent Akira flying out toward the entrance of the parking lot and potentially out into the sidewalk and street if Sasuke hadn't darted through the air to catch her first.
Landing in a slide, Sasuke had Akira held bridal style, completely unconscious. Only three kicks. That had been all that it really took to knock her out. And it wasn't a merciful KO either from the deep dark bruise that had already formed on her swollen cheek from the foot that had hit her.
The girl that had done the deed looked quite disappointed at the quick outcome, almost pouting, "That was it? I mean, yeah she had ki, but that wasn't even enough for me to get limber." She directed her attention to Sasuke as he set Akira safely to the side, "So what about you tiger? You look like you wanna play around for a bit."
Sasuke stood back up and faced her down as he got a good amount of distance between himself and Akira just in case this got out of hand in a hurry, "Name."
"Excuse me?"
"What's your name?" Sasuke asked again bluntly, "I like to put a name with the faces of people that piss me off."
A rather provocative and chillingly saucy grin appeared on the woman's face as she winked at Sasuke, "Juri Han. Would you like my number too?"
His eye twitched and he cracked his knuckles one good time as he got back into his previous stance, "I am going to enjoy this way more than I should." He said as he scrutinized her closely, 'Why is her eye generating energy?'
The recently identified Juri just laughed to herself and held one hand over her left eye, the one Sasuke found suspicious, "You and me both, but not today."
"What?"
"You heard me. I'm the kind of girl that puts pleasure before business. You could be both, but right now you're the business."
How was he business? Did someone finally know enough about him in the underworld to put out a hit on him? Or could it have been something else, "You don't get that choice. You lost it when you attacked us."
"Technically I didn't attack anyone, I just defended myself." In a surprising show of speed and leg strength Juri jumped into the air straight off of the ground to land on a rooftop in one nimble backflip, "Like I said, I'll be in town for a while, and I want to have my own fun first before I get to work. Unless you want to leave her alone just to chase after little ol' me."
In return Sasuke just narrowed his eyes and 'humphed' at the mean-spirited woman before moving back to Akira, "I'll see you soon enough."
"Oh don't be that way handsome. I promise that the next time you see me you'll have me all to yourself all night long." And with that Juri departed by running along the rooftops and streetlights, "I've got to settle a bit of a score of Bison's sinful little Dolls first."
There were rumors that the Doll codenamed Killer Bee had been relocated to Japan and to this town in particular. Juri had a real problem with that girl being alive, and sought to remedy that before she went about her S.I.N prescribed assignment.
She could spare a day or two to find her.
Character Profile
Name: Gen
Nationality: China
Gender: Male
Age: 79 (Birthday: March 12)
Height/Weight: 5'5/134 ½ lbs.
Bloodtype: O
Likes: Meat buns, Chinese poetry, his friend Lee (Yang & Yun's long-lost uncle), Chun-Li's deceased father, his students (including Yang, Yun, and Chun-Li).
Dislikes: Many different people (Sasuke Uchiha included), warriors with no honor.
Hobbies: Prescribing Chinese herbal medicine
Rivals: Akuma, Ryu (friendly), Chun-Li (friendly).
Fighting Style: Multiple styles of Kung Fu such as Crane, Mantis, Snake, etc./Tai Chi/Chinese Kenpo/Assassination Arts of Sou-ryuu (Mourning Style) and Ki-ryuu (Hateful Style).
Current Techniques: Hyakurenko (Hundred Linking Hooks), Gekiro (Opposing Waterfall), Jyasen (Snake's Puncture), Oga (Tormented Fang).
Hyper Techniques: Zan'ei (Cruel Shadow), Jyakoha (Snake's Bite Snap), Zetsuei (Absolute Shadow), Shitenketsu (Deadly Acupuncture), Ryukoha (Dragon's Bite Snap), Teiga (Crying Fang).
Background: Perhaps the most complete master of Chinese martial arts in the modern age, Gen is a legendary assassin of the law, with a guild based out of Hong Kong. Having taken down hundreds of high-priority targets in his life he is extremely well-known in the criminal world, just as famous in the underground as any legend comparison in the mainstream and even more feared by crime lords as he is said to be invincible in combat. Took part in Sagat's First World Warrior Tournament in the hopes of finding worthy opponents, but was diagnosed with leukemia during a mandatory health screening and was forced out of the competition early on without ever losing and without getting the battle he sought.
Gen's mastery of more or less every fighting style that can be found in China has made him a highly sought after teacher of the martial arts for truly knowledgeable, though is extremely fickle. His students are few and far between, but include Chun-Li, Yang, and Yun as relatives of his friends. Even Ryu had seen fit to train with him for a short time after the first tournament. His lifestyle of diligent training and knowledge of traditional medicines has kept his body healthier than the body of a normal man a quarter of his age. His focus is on precision and attacks that can quickly and cleanly kill enemies with the least amount of damage possible. His strength in this is so readily acknowledged by all that know of him that he had even attracted the attention of Akuma, surviving the strongest techniques of one another before Akuma detected his to-be fatal illness and left. To this day even in his declining health Gen longs for a final battle to the death with a worthy enemy, not willing to die in a sickbed of his disease and wishing to go out in a blaze of glory while his body is still able.
Name: Crimson Viper
Nationality: United States of America
Gender: Female
Age: 30 (Birthday: July 18)
Height/Weight: 5'9/123 lbs.
Bloodtype: AB
Likes: Her daughter Lauren, making money.
Dislikes: Doing overtime.
Hobbies: Magic
Rivals: Anyone in the way of her job.
Fighting Style: Covert fighting tools and anonymous spy-oriented martial arts
Current Techniques: Thunder Knuckle, Burning Kick, Seismic Hammer.
Hyper Techniques: Emergency Combination, Burst Time, Burning Dance.
Background: Crimson Viper is an extremely aloof high-ranking employee of S.I.N. and the head of the 'Battle Suit' project for the organization; a project meant to search for avenues to produce 'enhanced beings'. The suit combines Viper's natural speed and agility with the lethal gadgets in her suit including powered gloves and special boots that serve multiple ability-enhancing purposes. The only test subject involved in the project with the skill and overall physical qualifications to use 100% of the suit's possible capabilities effectively, Viper is the primary candidate for testing the suit in field operations.
A woman with a very superior and condescending attitude, she despises things that keep her from spending time with her daughter Lauren, and has no patience for things that impede her from completing her job due to this. These things include incompetence in the workplace and troublesome outside elements. She is not a very sociable woman, and seems to casually ignore right and wrong in exchange for focusing solely on her own goals. The affairs of S.I.N. are only as important to her as to what she seeks to obtain from working for them.
Name: Juri Han
Nationality: South Korea
Gender: Female
Age: 19 (Birthday: January 1)
Height/Weight: 5'5/101 lbs.
Bloodtype: AB
Likes: Spicy food, spiders, fighting powerful and honorable warriors.
Dislikes: Rules, tedious people, Shadaloo.
Hobbies: Photographic memory
Rivals: N/A
Fighting Style: Taekwondo
Current Techniques: Fuuhajin (Wind Breaking Blade), Shinkusen (Flash of Suffering), Senpuusha (Piercing Windmill), Kasatushi (Deathly Killing Stare).
Hyper Techniques: Fuharenjin (Wind Breaking Chain Blades), Kaisen Dankairaku (Spinning World-Ending Descent).
Background: One of the most prominent world-class practitioners of Taekwondo in South Korea amongst any age group at the age of 15, Juri was also the daughter of a lawyer in charge of prosecuting organized crime operations, with Shadaloo being his next target at the time. Due to this her family was kidnapped and eventually killed, with Juri losing both of her parents and badly damaging her left eye in the process. Warped by the incident, Juri became very vengeful, wishing to destroy anything having to do with Shadaloo in any way she could and learning to fight for vengeance and the thrill of battle. Somehow winding up in S.I.N., they implanted a cybernetic replacement with the experimental Feng Shui Engine inside of it; a device that generates extra energy to her and gives her already extremely powerful ki, strength, and speed temporary boosts to unimaginable levels.
Appropriate for her style, Juri possesses extremely powerful kicks capable of killing common people in one strike and fast, versatile kicks that can land from any position and situation. She is very cunning and sadistic even outside of battle, with a 'black widow' kind of personality, and despises following the rules and standards of others, seeing them as a hindrance as those same rules and regulations kept her family from being protected and from justice being exacted on Shadaloo. Even through this Juri has a sense of honor, twisted though it may be, as she will not hurt others that cannot defend themselves and only tends to fight when she needs to. She has a propensity to respect strong fighters that can challenge her, and fights fairly, although is very brutal in her approach.
Alright, I've read enough reviews saying such a thing that I feel it's necessary to address the fact that in regards to continuity Street Fighter III did not occur before the events of Street Fighter IV. The Street Fighter IV things happened years before the events of III. If you don't believe me look it up for yourself. Just don't shoot the damn messenger. I do my homework.
And that's all I've got for you. Hope you enjoyed it. Happy Frieza Day.
Kenchi out.