Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my stories. Therefore I would appreciate it if no one took legal action against me. I'm not rich by any measure and can barely afford rent on a modest apartment. There's no way whatever you got from me would cover even an seventh of your legal fees.
Early Morning
I don't know what the hell lives in these forests but I wished they'd just attack me instead of skittering around where I can't see them, he thought grumpily as he walked down the dirt path he'd found an hour ago. It's freaky as hell trying to think when I can hear every little movement.
Animal keen senses were all good when it helped him make out where he was walking with only moonlight and starlight to provide illumination but, when he could hear things like they were happening right next to him, it got very annoying. It was like trying to get some sleep but to be kept from doing so because you can hear squirrels holding track and field competitions on the roof of your house. He'd tried a few times to chase after the little noise makers but, with so much in the way of vegetation for them to hide under and the animal instinct to freeze in order to evade predators, he soon gave up. As annoying as it was, he had better things to do then chase after woodland animals just because they were bothering him.
Shouldn't be much further, he thought as he noticed fresher footprints in the dirt. If they're still using dirt roads around here instead of paved ones, it probably means I'm pretty far from civilization. Still, if I can get directions and maybe a lift on a carriage to someplace more modern, it'll still be worth the walk.
It was a minute later that he made it far enough up the hill he'd been walking up that he could get his first glimpse of what lay beyond it.
Huh. Japan, he thought as he looked at the oriental architecture of the buildings that he'd only ever seen at a distance before. Of all the places I thought I'd been dropped, this was only number three.
He couldn't help but grin a bit since it'd been one of the places he'd considered going for his post high school road trip thanks to his love of anime as well as manga. True, he was penniless and would probably need to call collect back home so Giles could loan him enough yen for a plane ticket home, but still he'd be able to take a good look around just the same. With a bit of luck he'd be able to scout out a few cool places he could visit in more detail after he graduated from high school, thus saving him some trouble in the future.
When he finally entered the village, he immediately attracted attention but, considering he was both Caucasian and dressed distinctly different from the locals, this was to be expected. Looking about, he found that the town citizens were dressed in clothes that would be right at home in one of those late eighteen hundred, early nineteen hundreds period martial arts flicks. Casually looking about, he couldn't see any cameras or signs of a film crew, so he felt confident that he hadn't walked onto some movie set without realizing it. He must've been REALLY out in the sticks in Japan for them to be this far behind modern fashion, but since he'd never heard of a village that Japan forgot existing, he wasn't discouraged. Someone had to know where the land of concrete and automobiles could be found so he'd just have to ask around and get some directions.
It was as he thought that though that he recalled one important fact that he'd somehow managed to overlook.
He didn't know how to speak Japanese aside from a few words or phrases he learned from subbed anime shows.
Somehow he doubted he'd get very far with that limited vocabulary.
C'mon, Xan! he thought as he tried to keep himself optimistic. There's gotta be at least one person in this entire village who understands enough English to understand when you ask for directions to Tokyo.
Looking for a possible source of information, he spotted a man with the first signs of grey hairs working what looked to be some kind of knick-knack booth and figured he'd do. Walking up and trying not to look disrespectful or anything, he pretended to look at a few of the things being sold, one of a kind designs if he was any judge, before speaking using plain non-slang words. The simpler he kept his words the less chance that there'd be misinterpretation and the better his odds would be of getting the right information.
"Hello. Do you know which way to go to get to Tokyo?" he asked with his lopsided smile on his face.
"Tokyo? Where's that?" the older man asked, clearly familiar with speaking English given the minimal accent being used.
He doesn't know where Tokyo is? He felt a bit puzzled. I'm pretty sure this is Japan but I guess it could be China. Don't know enough to know of any differences between the two. Maybe try something different.
"What about the capital? Can you tell me which direction it's in from here?" he asked, figuring any capital city, Chinese or Japanese, would have an airport he could use.
"Oh! You're a ways away from here, stranger," the older man replied, finally looking like he understood. "A good five day walk from here at least."
"Any chance I could catch a ride with someone heading that way?" he asked, preferring it if he could shorten the journey as much as possible.
"Hmmmm… Li Mann should be heading that way in a few hours," the older man replied after a moment's consideration. "If you wait by the northern village path, you should have no trouble finding him."
"Thanks! I'll do that," he said with a smile and what he hoped was a passable bow of respect. "Have a good day."
"You as well, stranger," the older man said, returning the bow.
With that he made his way further into and closer to the northern part of the village, where he'd find the path he needed. As he walked he continued to take in the locals as well as their village, if for no other reason than to see firsthand what before he'd only seen in movies. From what he could see the place didn't have even a lightbulb's worth of electricity, meaning that they likely did everything the old fashioned way. It was like he was in a Japanese Amish village or something. Not that he had anything against people who chose to live that way but it had to be rough and, if they rejected modern medicine along with every other piece of modern tech, lives had to be shorter. Still, he supposed if they didn't live as long as the people in the big city did, then it just meant that they used what time they did have wisely and cherished every day.
It was a good way to live no matter where it was in his opinion.
It didn't take him long to find the northern path as well as the red painted arch placed over it, so with no better ideas he leaned up against the arch to await a guy with a carriage or a set of horses. Hopefully it'd be a carriage or cart or something because, considering how much heavier he probably was at the moment, probably around three hundred pounds or so, it'd be too much for a single horse to carry very easily, if at all. Better for him to get into a carriage or a cart that hopefully was built sturdily enough to carry him all the way, or at the very least part of the way, to the capital. Any time that could be cut off the trip would be great since it'd be less time for the Scoobies to worry about him and less time Snyder could use against him to assign detention.
As he leaned against the archway, he let his gaze wander to whatever seemed interesting at the time as he waited for his ride to arrive. Sometimes it was a person walking by on some early morning task while other times it was a pet dog that trotted on by, only giving him a momentary look before proceeding on its way. He was a little surprised that that the dog hadn't gotten defensive and bared its teeth at him but then he recalled in the comic books that animals tended to do one of two things in Wolverine's presence.
Either they accepted him as one of their own, a fellow wild animal, or they challenged him and, depending on how merciful Logan was feeling, they'd either be sent running with their tail between their legs or they'd be dead. In this case the dog had either not considered him a threat to its territory or saw it as a fellow animal needing no more than to be acknowledged before moving on. It was interesting but not enough to hold his attention for very long.
It was a little under two hours later when he was about to think about just walking the entire way, regardless of how much time he'd lose, that a man sitting on a cart being pulled by two horses came into view. While there were numerous roads between where this man was and the northern village path, he felt confident that he was looking at Li Mann. His confidence was rewarded soon as the horse draw cart turned towards him with no other possible destination being possible.
"Li Mann?" he asked, hoping this guy understood English even if he couldn't speak it.
"Yes?" Li Mann asked with mild curiosity as he brought his cart to a stop.
"I was told you're heading in the direction of the capitol," he replied with a grin. "Could I catch a ride? I can walk if it'd be too much trouble for you but it'd be a big help."
"Well, I'm not goin' all the way to the capitol," Li Mann said, sounding a little uncertain. "You'd still have about two days of walkin' to do. If you're okay with that then sure, I can give you a ride until then."
"Thanks! I appreciate it," he said as his grin turned into his lopsided smile.
Carefully getting into the cart so as not to accidentally snap the wooden boards or upend it entirely, he did his best to get comfortable for the ride.
Here's hoping my butt doesn't fall asleep, he thought as Li Mann snapped the reins to get the horses moving again.
Three Days Later
"See you around, Li!" he said, somewhat forcing a smile on his face as he waved at the man on the cart riding away.
"Same to you, Xander!" Li Mann said, sounding genuinely happy with the company he'd had for the last three days.
NEVER have I been so glad to be alone in all my LIFE! he thought once he was facing away from Li Mann, a look of supreme irritation on his face.
Don't get him wrong, the guy was good for letting him hitch a ride this far and the man had even shared some of his food when they set up camp for the night. It'd been pretty good even if it was a little fresher than a city boy like him usually got from the local grocery store. Like 'just recently hunted down and skinned' fresh, but it'd still tasted well enough after being cooked over an open fire so it wasn't all that bad. No, the thing that had him glad that Li Mann was getting further and further away from him was the fact that the man was an INSANE chatterbox that only ever shut up when he was too tired to move his mouth.
Not one minute after they'd left the village the man had started talking about anything, EVERYTHING, and would pester him to say something if he remained too silent. He did his best to keep his answers brief and to the point, with meaningless filler to make up for what he couldn't say, but the guy had an uncanny knack for seeing through such. Therefore it'd been a small kind of hell trying to keep the secrets he needed to keep while also time providing satisfactory answers to any inquiries sent his way.
Still, it hadn't been a total waste since he'd learned quite a bit about where he'd landed.
However with places like Fort Tamblin, Da Chao Mountain and the like, he had to wonder just how far out in the boonies he really was. Sure, he hadn't done all that much research on either Japan or China, so it was entirely possible that they were just better known to the locals than they were internationally. Still he couldn't shake this annoying itch at the back of his brain that indicated that there was something familiar about the name of the mountain. He was SURE that he'd heard of it someplace before but he couldn't quite make everything click in his mind. It had to have been something he'd heard or read or saw in the last couple of months because, just like Willow always chastised him about, he tended to forget certain things after a few months. Where her mind was like a sponge, his was more like a towel that could only soak up so much and after that the excess info just dripped off of him to the floor. That wasn't a problem if it was the right knowledge but he had school stuff he had to learn, what chores needed to be done at home, his various interests or hobbies and, as of a little over a year ago, stuff on demons to beat into his brain.
It was pretty much first come, first serve as far as what got absorbed, with any new stuff having a better chance of being retained if it was something he needed to remember every day.
So whatever Da Chao Mountain was that was familiar to him, it had to have been something recent but not something he needed to know about every single day. He'd thought about it off and on since he'd first heard the name but he was no closer to figuring out where he'd heard it than before, so with a sigh he just gave up. It wasn't necessary to what he needed in order to get back so he'd shelf it for the time being and maybe once he was back home he'd look it up online or ask Willow about it.
Tying his biker jacket around his waist he began the last two day leg of his journey towards the capitol city where he'd find civilization and a phone. Looking left and then right, he had to admit that he was a bit puzzled as to why he hadn't seen any highways or power lines since, if he was two days away from the capitol city, you'd expect there to be some. Indeed, in terms of technology level things hadn't gotten any more modern than the village he'd originally visited. It made him think that it was more likely he was in China rather than Japan since one of the things he clearly recalled hearing was that the latter was pretty densely populated. With limited space and tons of people, there wouldn't be a whole lot of forested areas or places where modern technology hadn't reached. If he'd been in Japan, he should've seen something by now but he hadn't, so he could only conclude that he was in China. The country was a great deal larger than Japan, meaning it'd mesh a lot better with the idea of him being in an area that still clung to the old ways of doing things.
Before he could think more on the matter, though, a sound reached his ears that put him on alert even as he kept himself from freezing up or interrupting the tempo of his steps. It wasn't too obvious and, if he didn't have Wolverine's enhanced senses, he probably wouldn't have picked up on it, but he definitely heard the sound of branches snapping in seven different places. Not tree branches but rather bush branches as well as whatever broken tree branches that lay on the ground for one reason or another. Focusing for a moment, he tried to see if his ears could perceive more he picked up the sounds of people breathing but doing so in a way that'd make it hard for normal people to hear them.
How do I know what that's supposed to sound like? he thought with a bit of a start since he couldn't recall a single moment in Sunnydale when he studied such things well enough to know them.
He wasn't given any time to figure that out, sadly, since his startled expression must've made his hidden guests think that he'd spotted them. All at once they came out of the surrounding vegetation; they looked like a pretty rag-tag bunch, clad in loose brown pants and random pieces of what looked to be actual metal armor, but what struck him as really odd was the weapon each of them wielded. At first glance they reminded him of those Japanese spear weapons with the big blades at the end… naginatas he believed they were called, but they had gun barrel's attached to them, along with a pistol grip and trigger at the midway point of the spear shaft. Never once in all the martial arts or period movies from Asia had he ever seen anyone using a weapon like it and definitely not in modern times. Bandits, at least he was assuming these guys were bandits, usually preferred guns when they wanted to rob someone, and those that had to resort to blades were usually quite poor.
Bandits that got inventive and tried to combine the two like this… this had to be a first.
Lucky him?
"Give us all your money, foreigner! NOW!" ordered a man who looked to be the most respectably dressed and professional of the lot.
"Sorry, pal, but all I have is the clothes on my back and a cigar," he said, keeping his hands up in a 'let us talk' position. "And before you ask, I'm not giving up my clothes."
"Then maybe we'll take them off your cold, dead corpse," the Bandit Leader said with a bit of irritation at the slim pickings. "We should be able to get a few hundred gil for the lot of them."
Gil? Not yen or yuan? he thought, wondering where he'd heard the currency name before and why they'd want it instead of official country currency.
Now the itch in the back of his head, the one screaming at him that he should recognize what was going on, had doubled but the truth was still at the tip of his tongue. Whatever it was, he was beginning to realize that all of the possible places he'd thought he'd touched down in were not likely to be the case. That did not bode well for him being able to get home since, the less he knew about the country, the more likely he'd make a mistake of some kind.
First things first, he thought as the seven bandits inched closer to strike him down.
"Now I really think you should rethink things, bub," he said, unconsciously using some of Logan's vocabulary. "I don't know what reasons you've got for robbing people, maybe they're good reasons and maybe they're not, but you try and take what's mine and I guarantee you're going to regret it."
"We'll see about that, 'bub'! Kill'em!" the Bandit Leader ordered, pointing at him with his weird naginata-gun weapon.
Bringing up his hands as fists but not popping his claws, he prepared to fight the bandits off and hopefully convince them to go look for easier prey rather than keep trying to take him down. With Wolverine's healing factor he'd be able to take just about anything they sent his way but it'd also make him decidedly more memorable in their minds and he didn't want that. He just wanted to fly under the radar of everyone important, get to an airport and then fly home to resume his normal-yet-not-normal life in Sunnydale. With that in mind he decided the quickest way to get the bandits to turn tail was to take down their leader since, in groups like this, it was the strongest or most deadly bandit that gave the orders.
How he was going to get to the guy without being skewered, thus exposing his healing factor, he didn't know because nothing he'd ever used against vamps or demons applied here. Vamps and demons either used their fists or their claws to fight with the level of skill used being the only variable of note. These guys looked like they knew how to use their weapons well and that either meant a lot of experience in real fights or they'd received training from a professional.
He just might be in a bit of trouble.
"DIE!" yelled one bandit, who lunged forward with a thrust.
Then out of nowhere his body moved almost like it was on some kind of autopilot, shifting its weight to avoid the thrust attack while his left hand went for the attacker's left eye, attempting to gouge it out. His right hand was not idle during this time; it got a grip on the naginata-gun weapon and successfully managed to pull it from the bandit's grasp. Then, just to really shock him further, he ceased attempting to gouge out the eye and twirled the weapon so that the blade at the end was pointed at its former owner before finding its trigger and pulling it. A burst of four shots erupted from the barrel, with orange flames slamming into the bandit. While some hit metal armor, at least two shots succeeded in piercing flesh.
From there on it was a whirlwind of action, with his enemies attacking and his body deciding that near autopilot was better than letting him consciously decide what to do from moment to moment.
In the end though this proved to be the right decision since it allowed him to take down four of the bandits over the course of several minutes, leaving only the leader plus two of his subordinates, neither of which looked eager to get closer to him.
"You're gonna pay for that, outsider!" the Bandit Leader growled, clearly displeased with the current state of things. "SHOOT HIM!"
Knowing that the cat would be out of the bag if they shot him he charged towards them, yelling as fearsomely and perhaps as animalistically as he could to intimidate them and cause them to hesitate. This proved to be effective because, by the time they finished bringing their weapons up to fire, he was already within range, so with a baseball swing he got ambitious and tried to take all of them out at once with the blade. The one furthest to the right he managed to slice successfully across the stomach, the bandit leader he only got a light cut in the man's side due to a last minute deflection of the blade and the guy furthest to the left dropped his weapon, falling on his ass in an effort to evade the attack. What followed was a quick exchange of close quarter attacks, using a weapon that was designed to be used at mid-range, before he chose to end it with a kick to the family jewels. Unexpected and probably considered dishonorable, it landed perfectly, earning a squeak from the bandit leader before the guy dropped to the ground in pain.
Hated to do that to the guy. Probably hurt all the more with Adamantium wrapped around my bones, he thought with a bit of a sympathy wince. Still, it was the quickest way to end this before my little secret came out.
Looking at the bandits scattered about, he could tell just by what he could see and hear that they were scared of him and that made sense. Most people who robbed others for a living did so because they were cowards or were greedy and didn't want to earn a living the lawful way. Those kind of people quickly chickened out if a big enough dog popped up and, thanks to his muscles remembering things he didn't consciously know, he'd proven just how big a dog he was.
"Now I'm pretty sure I told you guys you'd regret trying to take what's mine," he said, trying to sound as confident and intimidating as possible. "Be glad you didn't catch me on a bad day or else none of you'd be leaving here alive. Now get the hell out of here and don't let me catch you pulling this kind of shit again! GO!"
With that the subordinate that'd dropped his weapon and fallen on his ass got to his feet and helped his leader do the same before they both moved as quickly as they could into the forest. He could hear the others who were able do the same with those who were a little worse for wear being helped as best they could without further aggravating their injuries. This was better than he'd thought since he'd been expecting the bandits to pull an 'every man for himself' routine, leaving their comrades to fend for themselves. Were they actually soldiers pretending to be bandits? He supposed that if there were targets that the local military couldn't officially attack without repercussions then the next logical course of action would be to arrange an 'attack by bandits' to get the job done. Still, he couldn't think of an enemy a country would fear that he resembled enough to be considered a viable target other than the stereotypical 'American dog'.
Whatever! I fought them off somehow and they're running back home with their tails between their legs, he thought, shaking his head to get rid of the useless speculation. With any luck they'll spread the word that I'm not an easy target and it'll be smooth sailing from here on out.
Dropping the weapon he'd BORROWED from one of the bandits to the ground, he resumed his walk down the dirt road in the hopes of reaching civilization soon so he could go home.
Only this time his travel thoughts were centered more on how he'd just managed to overcome seven armed bandits without a single scrape to show for it.
Two Days Later
"This… is the capitol?" he whispered as he looked at the sight laid out before him.
It had to be.
He'd been walking for two days and that was how long he'd been told it'd take to get to the capitol and he'd checked with Li Mann the day before they'd parted ways to make sure that he was on the right road. In short, two different people had told him that he was on the right road, going in the right direction and should arrive at his destination within five days from the beginning and two days after getting off the cart. So unless some unseen force picked him up while he was sleeping and placed him someplace else entirely that at least to a non-woodsman looked the same as where he fell asleep, he had to be looking at the capitol city. There was just one supreme reason he wasn't thinking something like 'I am halfway home' at the moment.
The 'capitol city' looked like a better maintained and a more expensive version than the town that he'd first walked into after arriving in the country. Mostly pagoda style buildings but with a few simpler roofs attached to buildings that still spoke to him of Asian architectural styles of one kind or another. He could see people moving to and fro, clad in the same time of clothes Li Mann as well as everyone else he'd seen so far wore. He could even see patrols of men wearing armor similar to what the bandits had worn but much more complete and much more official looking. If he had to guess, the bandits were either dishonorably discharged or the crooks had stolen their gear from the soldiers since it'd obviously be of a much higher quality than anything else available for purchase. In any case, it was pretty obvious that either he'd been dropped into the country that time forgot about a century ago or… or he wasn't in his own world anymore.
Some might think that he'd just been sent back in time but the odd weapons the bandits had used squashed that possibility nicely.
Still, he didn't have enough information yet to be comfortable with his current situation since 'alternate reality' was something of a broad term and he wanted something a little more specific. With that in mind he started walking forward and didn't stop until he was in the middle of the town, where he could get a closer look at things. Looking at the signs, he was somewhat pleased to know that whatever world he was in, whatever country he'd landed in, used a mix of English and Japanese rather than some language he'd be hopeless in. The former he knew since he'd been raised on it and used it all his life. As for the latter subbed anime helped with a lot of the more common signs while his own efforts at learning Japanese, both written and spoken, after he'd decided to travel to Japan after graduation. It wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but he felt fairly certain that he could read most things written and understand enough of what was spoken to get by.
Store sign after store sign he looked at, trying to find clues that'd tell him something about the world he was in and if he'd lucked out by landing in a dimension familiar to him. Oh, sure, he knew that there were an infinite number of alternate dimensions and that the odds of him landing in one that matched a television show or movie or video game or anime were pretty damn small. Still, a guy could hope and it was actually a good coping mechanism for the fact that he was now who knew how many dimensions away from his friends, with possibly no way of getting back. Looking about he tried to find something that'd give him an idea of what fictional world he'd dropped into but most of the signs were unhelpful. Then he heard the roaring of an excited crowd to his right and decided to see what the commotion was about on the off chance he'd like it too. Plus, if a lot of people were there, he could eavesdrop and possibly get more clues about what world he was in so he could start making some plans.
A minute or three later he came upon a fairly decent crowd of people surrounding what looked to be a platform surrounded by a fifteen foot high wire fence. It kinda reminded him of a fight cage but a bit more primitive, implying that it valued function over appearance. Inside two guys were going at it like kung fu masters, at speeds that he'd probably have had difficulty following if it weren't for the Wolverine upgrades. All in all it looked pretty damn cool, with the rest of the crowd sharing his opinion of the performance the fighters were putting on.
However when he noticed the sign hanging from the top of the wire fence, all thoughts of the fight left his mind as the impossible suddenly became reality.
'Wutai Monthly Fighting Tournament'.
That's what it said.
Wutai.
It hit him all at once and it was only a miracle that he managed to keep his utter shock from being voiced out loud.
The names of the places Li Mann told him about, the weird weapons the bandits used and the distinct pre-modern era Japanese architecture as well as clothing all fit together with that one name.
HOLY SHIT! I'M IN THE FINAL FANTASY SEVEN UNIVERSE! he thought before managing to stumble over to an empty bench and sit down.
Of all the places he'd considered being dropped in, both since his parachute-less sky dive and even back in Sunny-D when the gang debated where they'd most like a random dimensional portal to drop them, it'd never come up. Mostly because the game had only come out at the beginning of September and they'd only reopened the debate once since then. He'd already beaten the game at home on his Playstation, a gift from Jesse's parents after his death as a 'he would have wanted you to have it' thing, so he had a reasonable idea of how things worked.
In this reality monsters of all shapes and sizes existed and were considered as normal as normal animals were back home. There were no real sprawling cities like Los Angeles or New York City, with the only one that came close being Midgar, though he wouldn't exactly call the metallic city a good place to live. The graphics of the game might not have given a very realistic picture of how things were but he'd seen enough to know that the people who lived in the slums basically lived in a cross between a landfill and a sewer. Sure, Aerith managed to pretty up the church and the area around her home with flowers but the rest of the place looked barely livable, with more than a few people getting sick on a regular business.
At least I won't have to worry about that place anytime soon, he thought as he looked about the capitol of the country of Wutai. Still, if this is Yuffie's hometown then there's something off about all this.
According to the stuff mentioned in the game, Wutai had been reduced from a proud warrior nation to a tourist attraction where it was forbidden for people to own or use materia. It was one of the main reasons the klepto girl worked so hard to acquire as many materia spheres as possible, thinking that it'd help make her country great again.
Looking about, though, the capitol city didn't look like some cheesy tourist spot and the fact that he could see armed soldiers patrolling the area as well as monitoring the fight meant that something was definitely amiss. While people owning basic weapons and knowing how to fight probably wasn't forbidden under the terms set down by Shinra, having an actual military probably did. Did that mean he'd landed in the reality far after the end of the game where it had been successfully restored or way before the game and the conflict with Shinra? He wasn't sure which would be preferable but it was definitely something he needed to find out since, if he was less than a year away from the Wutai war, he wanted to know so he could hop on the next boat out of the country.
He didn't like Shinra or what they did to Wutai but he wasn't stupid enough to think that even a determined pseudo-Wolverine would be able to change the outcome. Even if he went all out, he would only be one person against hundreds of Shinra troops, dozens of SOLDIERS of various classes and the great General Sephiroth himself. He had no idea if his claws would be strong enough and sharp enough to cut through the Masamune but, considering the supposed skill of the madman in the making, he doubted he'd last long in a fight. Even if his current theory, that the fighting skills and maybe memories of Wolverine were in his head somewhere was right, Logan did tend to rely on his healing factor to get him in close so he could use his claws.
He hadn't quite developed a resistance to pain or a willingness to get cut up just to cut the other guy just yet.
Looking about the crowd, he tried to find someone old enough to know things but also separate from the others, so EVERYONE wouldn't know he was a little clueless about stuff they took for granted. In the end he spotted a young woman in her late teens or early twenties that looked to be wearing some rather refined clothes, implying wealth. Assuming the wealthy here were anything like the wealthy pre-nineteen hundreds Japanese, then there was a good chance that she was moderately educated. Deciding she was as good a choice as anyone he got off the bench he'd been sitting on and casually walked over to her, glancing at the fight every now and again. It looked like the taller of the two fighters was beginning to gain some momentum so unless shorty managed to break it, the fight would soon be over.
"So who's your money on?" he asked the young woman in a scarlet dress without taking his eyes off the fight.
"You assume that I have made a wager on the outcome of this fight," the young woman replied in a way that spoke of refined manners and proper etiquette.
"True, but isn't that what happens at any sort of competition, plus everyone has a favorite fighter they want to see win it all," he said, nodding in concession at her point. "The way those guys are going at it, this has to be either the final match of the tournament or at least the semi-final, so I just thought you'd want one guy to win more than the other."
"I believe Gamo Naotsune will win this match and it is the final one," the young woman said after a moment's pause. "Bessho Kihei is too rigid, too traditional, to be able to adapt swiftly enough to the unexpected."
"Good choice. Being able to adapt to split second changes puts the fight in your favor," he said, remembering the number of times his quick reactions saved his butt fighting vamps.
"Not if you are only capable of reacting and not acting as well," the young woman said, sounding quite sure of herself as she glanced at him. "If you're only capable of evasion, you'll tire eventually, leaving yourself vulnerable."
"Maybe, but if your opponent relies mostly on brute strength to win a fight, you can tire him out just by dodging. Then, when he's tired, impatient or reckless, he'll make a mistake giving you an opening to exploit," he countered both truthfully and to make it sound like he actually knew something about professional fights. "A smart fighter can overcome a stronger fighter any day of the week."
The crowd roared as the taller fighter in the fenced off ring landed a decisive looking blow that knocked his opponent on his back, with signs that he'd get up decreasing by the second. Eventually the guy who he presumed was the tournament official or referee finally called it, entering the ring and raising the victor's hand to the joy of the cheering crowd. There were a few people who didn't look quite as happy, they'd probably bet on the other guy, but the majority had apparently wagered wisely before the fight started.
"He's a pretty good fighter," he said before setting up his first test. "Bet he could kick the ass of any one of Shinra's troops."
"Hmph! Those foreigners don't know anything about true fighting," the young woman grumped, clearly not a fan of foreigners or Shinra. "Ever since they discovered how to turn Mako into energy almost twenty years ago, they think they rule the planet already."
So Shinra is getting powerful but hasn't attacked Wutai yet, he thought, using logic and a little common sense. Yuffie was sixteen in the game, I think, because she certainly acted like she was. If she was young enough to know what Wutai was like before the war but too young to fight in it, then it probably means I've landed at least ten years prior to her birth probably.
It was times like these that he really wished that the people of Squaresoft had actually gone a bit further in the game when it came to working out a specific timeline for the game. If he'd seen such precise dates in the game when he played, he'd have a better framework to work with and base his future decisions on. Still, he decided to go just a step further to see if he could wheedle out a more specific date out of the young woman while he could.
"Here's hoping they don't come here then, eh?" he asked rhetorically as the victorious fighter left the ring and entered the crowd. "They'd probably make a real mess of the place."
"We would never allow them to take a single step onto our land," the young woman said, turning towards him completely with strong resolve in her voice. "They may plunder the rest of the world but they will not defile the proud land of Wutai!"
So while Shinra is throwing its weight around, they haven't made a move on Wutai yet. He figured that he had at least a five year buffer zone before the war broke out.
Assuming he stayed in the country until the absolute last minute, he'd have to keep an eye out for the first signs of Shinra trying to get access to Wutai. The game didn't specify how the whole thing began but he presumed that they tried buying land in Godo's country first and only when that failed did they declare war. After all, war is expensive and to someone like President Shinra, who valued both money as well as power, then wasting either was not something he'd do easily. He'd stick around the Wutai capitol and keep an eye out for anything that looked like a Shinra guest showing up at the royal palace or whatever they called it. Once he saw the rep go in he'd make for the harbor and do whatever he could to catch a ride someplace else.
"HEY! Just what do you think you're doing, outsider?!" came an angry voice that brought him out of his thoughts.
Looking to the voice he spotted the winner of the tournament heading towards him, a significantly angry look on his face making him wonder what he'd done to piss the guy off.
"What do you mean?" he asked, genuinely uncertain of what was being implied.
"You know damn well what I mean!" Gamo Naotsune replied, not stopping until they were almost nose to nose. "Kasumi's my girl and I won't have a foreigner like you putting the moves on her!"
"Hey, I don't know where you were looking, bub, but I was just talking about your fight with her," he said putting up his hands in the universal 'I do not want a fight' position. "If she's your girl then I'll go find someone else to talk to. Have fun with your victory celebration or whatever."
With that he turned around intent on finding the nearest bar since such places were a good source of information, provided the person you were listening in on was still partially sober.
"You dare to turn your back to me!" Gamo Naotsune roared angrily, as though he'd been insulted. "KIIYYYAAHHHH!"
Before he could even turn around to see what the guy was doing something impacted the back of his head, knocking him to the ground and, while it hurt, any damage was quickly undone by his healing factor. For Gamo, though, who he was pretty sure had kicked him in the back of the head, he was on the ground gripping the leg that'd done the kicking, screaming in pain. Not surprising since a full strength kick to the back of an Adamantium-laced skeleton must've been like kicking a thick lead pipe full blast. Either the guy's foot was severely bruised at the moment or it was broken, and that he considered a just punishment for kicking an innocent person in the back of the head with the intent to cause harm.
Plus it'd give the competitors in the next monthly tournament a chance to win the big prize rather than let this asshole go for a win two years in a row.
"A piece of advice, pal? Don't let your pride control you or else the next time you kick someone in the back of the head you might not get off so easy," he said even though he doubted that the man was even listening to him.
"GET HIM!" came an angry order but it hadn't come from Gamo.
It came from his girlfriend.
"WHAT!?" he exclaimed as he noticed several people from the crowd that'd been observing the fight started advancing towards him with hostility.
Stepping away from the advancing men, he tried to think of what he could say that'd convince them to let him off the hook but couldn't really come up with anything. He was a stranger, he had no connections or influence in Wutai and didn't have any money he could use to bribe them into letting him go. Could he take them all in a fight? Definitely. His healing factor would deal with any injuries as fast as they were created and, unless one of them had a heavy hammer or materia handy, they'd run out of steam before he did. Still, he wasn't quite ready to reveal his special mutant abilities to the people of Wutai just yet so, without any further consideration, he bolted.
"PREPARE FOR A BEATING!" one of his pursuers yelled.
"YOU WON'T GET AWAY!" yelled another, sounding like his resolve was strong enough to last a while.
Like hell I won't! he thought as he picked up the pace. I've got over a year of experience running from things that wanted to beat me to death and I'm still here!
Some might call him unmanly for running from a fight and out of character for Wolverine, but in his mind Logan wouldn't be so immature so as to fight a group of fight fans like this.
The X-Man might be a bit rough around the edges and might act all alpha male but he didn't get into pointless fights.
Early Evening
About flamin' time I lost those assholes! He sat down beneath a tree he'd chosen to hide behind. All that noise just because their favorite fighter busted up his own leg kicking me? They're nuts!
Still, he supposed it was this sort of mindset that led the soldiers of Wutai into getting their asses handed to them in the war against Shinra. Everything he'd ever seen in the game implied that the war was one sided since it was the only explanation for the country being turned into a vacation spot. If the war had been more equal then Wutai would've had enough pride to hold onto who they were and what made them who they were, even if it was part of the terms of surrender. When the war started, the soldiers of Wutai were probably going to be so full of pride that when they locked horns with any member of SOLDIER, they're going to get wiped out. Even if they created some kind of heavy weapon or robot to try and even things out, the most it'd likely do is take out a few second or third class SOLDIERS, plus a ton of normal troopers. Unless they had a warrior or a weapon capable of overcoming three first class SOLDIERS at once, Wutai's defeat was all but certain and their pride would lead them to it.
Good thing it's not going to be my problem, he thought before his stomach began to growl, informing him it wanted to be fed. Right now my problem is finding something to eat that I don't have to catch, kill, skin and cook myself. Maybe a restaurant will let me have something if I promise to do the dishes for a couple of hours.
He had taken three steps away from the tree when two bits of sensory information hit him that had him freeze in his tracks so he could process it better. The first was the faint but still perceivable sound of metal against metal occurring in such a pattern that he knew it had to be a fight of some kind, and an uneven one at that. The second bit of sensory info happened when he forgot to breath through his mouth rather than his nose and wound up picking up the scent of blood in the air. Considering that only the darkest of dojos had people practicing with real weapons and permitted blood to be spilled, he figured it was a pretty safe bet that a referee adjacent fight was taking place. All of that added up to some kind of ambush he was betting and, unless reinforcements showed up to even the odds, the people losing weren't going to last another ten minutes.
Not that it was any problem of his.
No sireee bob!
Not his concern!
The scream of a female from the direction of the fight had him running towards it as fast as he could manage before his mind could stop him, leaving it nothing to do but curse his own stupid White Knight complex. Using his still somewhat overwhelming sense of smell and his sense of hearing to guide him, he only peripherally paid attention to how he managed to get around certain obstructions but still saw enough that Logan's muscle memories were coming into play again. If this turned out to be a pattern then it was safe to say that in times of stress and strong emotions, his Wolverine side was going to come out to play unless he made an effort to suppress it. Considering that he was walking into a fight where the bad guys probably outnumbered the good, he wasn't going to hold back the X-Man's fighting skills that lay in his new body's muscle memory. He'd probably need every bit of it to come out relatively unscathed and keep news of his healing factor from leaking out.
It was when he reached the edge of a stone wall holding up the side of a hill that he got his first look at the fight and it turned out to be worse than he'd thought.
On the one side were the good guys all dressed in very expensive looking outfits that practically screamed that they were from the upper crust of society, as well as three guards still living as six lying dead on the ground. From what he could tell, aside from the three remaining guards only two or three people of the rich people had any fighting skills whatsoever, with the rest resorting to the 'put something, ANYTHING, between me and the sharp pointy things' way of surviving. Those that could still fight were doing a good job but it was a case of numbers being against them that was slowly sliding things in favor of their enemies. That and he suspected that the good guys hadn't expect to be attacked by so many all at once, otherwise they either would've cancelled their little walkathon or brought more guards.
On the other side the bad guys clad in clothes and armor that looked like you could get them just about anywhere but didn't skimp on quality. Both the fabrics and the pieces of armor were quality work that'd do the job they were designed for but possessed nothing that'd allow the other side trace them back to their manufacturer or their buyer. True, he was too far away to look for any small maker symbols or signatures that might've been impressed into the armor or sewn into the clothes, but the baddies were definitely assassins. They had the whole ninja mask over the lower halves of their faces and they were completely bald, not to mention wielding weapons that definitely were made with assassination in mind. Ninjato swords, daggers, spears and sai were what he could identify off the top of his head but, since some of the dead guards had bullet holes in their chests or head, there had to be a shooter somewhere outside the main battlefield.
Perfect place to start evening the odds, he thought as he took two quick sniffs to try to locate the gunman.
It was hard, so many scents to take in at one time, but the situation that brought out his inner Wolverine seemed to cause him to be tugged towards one particular scent. Deciding it was as good a place as any to begin, he began to follow the scent and a minute later spotted a baddie laying on his stomach with a clear line of sight to the battle below. The rifle in the guy's arms was a little primitive compared to the stuff shown in the Rambo movies but was clearly effective as evidenced by the dead bodies of the guards. For a moment he debated whether to kill the sniper or just knock the person out so that he could be questioned later by the good guys, but decided on the latter. Assuming the good guys really were the good guys, then they'd need info to track down the top bad guy so he or she could be arrested and put on trial. With that decision made he crept towards the sniper and almost made it all the way before the target sensed something and turned in his direction. Abandoning stealth for speed he charged the guy and, after knocking the rifle aside, delivered a right hook that sent the killer off to lala land.
Well, that concludes the stealth portion of the fight, he thought as he looked back to the main battlefield to see that the good guys were down to the last guard. Time to make an entrance.
Deciding it'd be best to scatter and confuse the baddies, he decided to take a page out of Logan's book and dove off the perch the sniper had been laying in, aiming for the baddie in the center of the group of assassins. Like a thrown wine barrel he crashed into the unsuspecting assassin, slamming the guy to the ground and, judging by the snapping sounds, breaking a few bones in the process despite the armor. He didn't stick around to check as he went with his momentum and rolled to his feet, grabbing the next closest assassin by his upper body armor and headbutting the guy. When Adamantium skull met normal human one, it was no wonder that the guy with the normal one got knocked out and maybe got a cracked skull as well. He turned to deal with the next closest baddie but by then the shock of his arrival had worn off, causing three members of the assassins to focus on killing him.
At first he thought that his muscle memory would be enough to keep him alive long enough to disarm his attackers then take them out with nonlethal methods, but this was quickly proven drastically wrong.
With the bandits he'd been able to hold his own and take them down without injury to show for it, but the three assassins attacking him made the bandits look like children by comparison. It was currently him letting his muscle memories and instincts have complete control over what he did that was keeping his blood from decorating the ground. Whoever the assassins were, they were good and before long the one thing he'd hoped wouldn't happen did happen: one of their blades connected, leaving an impressive slice across his chest, damaging his white undershirt. Looking down and seeing the white turn red before his healing factor sealed up the wound, leaving not even a scar behind, he got a little annoyed. The clothes he had on were all he had and if they got any more cut up or dirtied, they'd be total write offs fit only for the trash bin. Taking the respite provided by the three assassins being shocked at his rapidly healing wound, he took off his biker jacket and tossed it to the side before deciding that if they knew a little, he might as well show them the rest.
"You boys want blood? Fine! I can play that game too, bub!"
SNIKT!SNIKT!
If the assassins had been shocked by him healing from a serious wound in seconds, they were doubly so at the sight of two sets of blades popping out of his fists, with each a foot in length. Not giving them time to recover from the double shock he charged them head on, lashing out with his claws the second he got within range. To their credit they tried to stop him, block his attacks, but that proved futile in the face of metal claws made of an indestructible metal since it allowed him to cut through everything they attempted to utilize in their defense. Before long there were severed limbs and for some multiple parallel cuts in sets of three in the bodies of the three assassins, leaving only a bloody but unharmed him standing. Given the mess and the amount of time it'd taken him to take care of his attackers, he found himself quite the center of attention for both sides so he decided to take a chance to end the battle immediately.
"You wannabe assassins got two choices: surrender or die," he said, trying to sound as badass and deadly as possible. "Make the right choice, 'cause you ain't gonna like the wrong one."
The remaining assassins looked at one another, silently communicating with body language as they debated in seconds what to do, before doing something he'd both been anticipating and hoping wouldn't happen. Without any hesitation, thus showing their devotion to their master, they all killed themselves with their weapons in various ways, ranging from self-impalement to simply slitting their own throats. It all happened way too quickly for anyone to stop them and, by the time the last one dropped lifelessly to the ground, there was nothing more to do.
Taking a few more sniffs to see if there were any more surprises, he was pleasantly surprised to find that it was easier utilizing his enhanced sense of smell than it had been before. Practice makes perfect? Probably. Bottom line, though, was that he couldn't smell anything that wasn't connected to someone he could plainly see, so unless the assassins had a mole in the good guy ranks, the fight was over. Retracting his claws back into his forearms with a wince, the familiar sensation of his healing factor closinh up the openings, he walked back over to where he'd dropped his jacket and put it on.
He was about to walk away when a young man in his late teens or early twenties rushed up to stop him, with a look that implied he wanted to say his piece before parting company.
"On behalf of my clan I thank you for coming to our aid, stranger," the young man said with a formal bow that had been practiced to perfection. "Had you not come, I fear the assassins would have succeeded in their mission."
"Just a case of being in the right place at the right time," he said respectfully as he did a passable bow of his own. "Besides, I hate uneven fights for the most part."
"For the most part?" the young man asked with curiosity.
"If the number of good people outnumber the bad people, then I'm okay with that," he replied with an amused smile that was soon mirrored by the young man.
"I am not surprised that a COMMONER like you would find a situation like that favorable," came a snooty voice that instantly made him think of an Asian Snyder. "Just as I would not be surprised if you only intervened in hopes of being richly rewarded."
Definitely a guy who thought very little of the middle and lower class members of society.
"Advisor Chi-ryu! That was uncalled for," the young man said, irritation in his voice. "Is it so impossible for you to consider that a stranger would choose to aid us for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do?"
"You are young, my prince, and thus are naïve in certain matters," Chi-ryu replied, looking respectfully yet also condescendingly to the young prince. "Those without wealth or power will always seek to take it from those who do have it. If they cannot do so by force they will do it through trickery, deceit and betrayal. If it were not for his low class clothing, I would have him arrested under suspicion of being an ally of the assassins. It would be a cunning move to insert a 'hero' into the attack who conveniently managed to kill or force them to commit suicide."
This guy has no friends and his wife must hate him, he thought, taking less than five seconds to deduce the truth about Chi-ryu. Only someone lonely and never been laid could be this much of a dick.
"Not all of them are dead," he said, ignoring the words of the advisor. "The shooter they had taking out your guards is unconscious up where I jumped from. Assuming he hasn't come to since then, you're free to question him."
With a gesture the advisor sent the sole surviving guard off to secure the unconscious member of the assassin group.
"Well, since everything seems to be settled down here, I'll be on my way," he said, deciding that there was nothing to keep him close proximity to Advisor Ass-wipe any longer.
"Wait!" the prince said, stopping him in his tracks and causing him to turn.
"What?" he asked, hoping that it was something brief.
"Here," the prince said before tossing a decent sized silk pouch to him. "It's not much but it's the least I can do to reward you for saving my life."
While normally he'd toss the money right back and say a person should never be paid for doing the right thing, the fact of the matter was that he had no money and didn't fancy living off the land. So with a respectful and grateful bow (or at least that's what he hoped was being conveyed) he accepted the money and walked away.
It wasn't until about five minutes later when his mind asked 'I wonder what the prince's name was' that something occurred to him that had him stop in his tracks.
"Holy shit! I just rescued Godo Kisaragi!" he exclaimed in shock at the fact that he'd saved the life of the future ruler of Wutai.
More than ever before he was glad that he'd chosen to seek out the source of the fighting and do the right thing by saving the young man. If he hadn't then Yuffie wouldn't have been born and she'd been one of his favorite characters in the game. A second thought occurred to him a moment later and so he opened up the pouch he'd been thrown to take a look inside. His jaw dropped once more in surprise as he found that the bag was filled more than two thirds of the way full with oblong golden plates that he was pretty sure were called Koban in Japan. He'd seen them in enough martial arts films and period movies that he'd asked Willow about them and she'd given him a three page report on Japanese currency.
Not sure how much one Koba is in this universe but I'm betting I have enough here enough to pay for a room plus food for a good number of weeks, he thought with a smile as he found himself. Still, I should probably learn how much one of these is worth in Wutai. I'll need to make all this last and that won't happen if someone suckers me into believing they're worth less than they really are.
With that in mind he went in search of some old man playing Chinese checkers or something. It was one of his little known talents that he could master just about any board game within four rounds, so even if Wutai's version was different he'd manage to learn everything soon enough.
There was no one who cared more about the truth than an old man who took his board games seriously.
Six Months Later, Wutai Village, The Princess Bar
Flamin' unbelievable, he thought as he looked about the bar he'd managed to have made with the reward money Prince Godo has given him for coming to the rescue. If someone told me a year ago I'd be the owner of a bar in the country of Wutai, I'd have laughed in their face.
It'd turned out that the amount of money that Godo had wound up giving him as a reward for taking down the assassins had amounted to roughly a quarter of a million American dollars by his estimate. Oh, the old man who'd eventually helped him out had given the total amount in gil, the currency used in most Final Fantasy games, which had been decidedly less than a quarter of a million, but he figured he had the conversion right. He'd basically taken the estimated value of a gold Koban at the end of the Edo period and replaced yen with American Dollars, so each plate in the pouch had been worth about four thousand dollars. Multiply that by the number of oblong Koban-like pieces of gold in the bag and he'd had quite a bit of currency to play with.
At first he'd just gotten a room at the local inn and occasionally hung out at the Turtle's Paradise Bar to eavesdrop on the patrons in order to get a feel for the state of the world he now lived in. Mostly he kept his ears open for any news about Shinra and the VIPs that got names along with a backstory in the game, since there was no point in learning about the nobodies. He'd paused for a second after that thought, remembering how many members of the Sunnydale nightlife had considered him a nobody, only to wind up dead thanks to him. After that he'd generalized his eavesdropping parameters to Shinra in general, as well as anything happening around their Mako reactors.
He'd confirmed that Shinra had discovered Mako energy about eighteen or so years ago and since then had been gong all out to promote the benefits of their reactors. Every other month there was something new coming out that ran on Mako energy or some ground breaking advancement in power generation. The biggest news, though, was that the construction of Migar had only started a few years ago, with completion slated to be within ten to twelve years. A few of the people who'd visited the bar had mentioned thinking about going there for the jobs that were being offered, but those people were the ones just passing through as opposed to being natives of Wutai. The locals couldn't care less about the corrupt company other than to say it wasn't their problem since they had no connection to Shinra whatsoever. He'd checked and, to his surprise, he couldn't find a single Shinra produced item anywhere in the village either owned or on the shelf ready to be sold by some shop owner.
Apparently Wutai was a self-sufficient country that didn't need stuff from elsewhere to get by.
It hadn't been until the end of month two that he'd gotten bored enough that he'd started thinking up things he could do to keep himself busy and/or amused. At first he'd thought about asking around to see if anyone was having monster problems, but since this world wasn't living in denial like Sunnydale was and the people didn't look scared shitless he figured they had it under control. He'd known nothing about what many of the jobs within a day's walk required a person to know, so aside from manual labor there'd been nothing for him to do. While not opposed to using his muscles to lift, move, shovel and do various other activities none of them were particularly fun. He wasn't money dependent thanks to the reward Godo had given him, so he could afford to try and find a job that both paid well and that he could have fun doing.
It'd been when he'd swung by Turtle's Paradise that he'd gotten his first push that'd led him to where he was now.
He'd gotten a seat at a table and was nursing the local equivalent of beer when he'd noticed one of the bar patrons getting a little too aggressive with one of the waitresses. Thanks to hanging around Wutai Village, he'd gotten to know her name, Lijuan Maeda or Maeda Lijuan or however it was supposed to be done, and while she wasn't quite in the friend category, she was getting there. As a result, seeing the patron leer at her while she put down his order was bad but when the guy grabbed her and put her in his lap, he knew things were going to go bad. Turtle's Paradise wasn't a sleazy bar that doubled as a brothel and it didn't allow the customers to get physical with the staff, be they man or woman. Naturally Lijuan tried to get back to her feet and repeatedly told the customer to keep his hands to himself, but the guy was either too drunk or too amoral to care.
Sadao, the owner of the bar, immediately left his place behind the counter to add his weight to the 'discussion' but it had not gone the way he'd thought it would at first.
It began simply enough with a polite request to let Lijuan go and a statement that such interaction with the staff was not permitted. When this had been ignored by the customer the owner had gone for a firmer 'I am serious so you do not want to cross me' tone of voice, with the added threat of summoning the village guards. This had just caused the guy to laugh before holding up a badge that immediately had caused Sadao to back down and Lijuan to submit with a bit of fear. He'd been a little confused by this but thankfully his animal sharp sense of hearing had soon caught one of the other patrons talking about how the macho jerk was a member of the Royal Investigations Bureau. Apparently they were the investigative branch of the palace guard and generally only answerable to the Emperor, Godo, and the people right under the royal family in authority. This, of course, had rankled him a bit since he came from where checks and balances were common and no one was above the law, regardless of the badge they had.
Still, he'd been willing to mind his own business, if for no other reason than wanting to avoid another encounter with Chi-ryu or cause Sadao trouble, but that'd come to a crashing halt with the asshole's next move.
Unlike most drunks he'd witnessed in his life, both from popular entertainment and real life, the guy from R.I.B. didn't stop his foul acts with just aggressive above clothes groping and sloppy kisses. The bastard had gone further and was actively trying to get his hands beneath her dress, both from below as well as at chest level. Lijuan had disliked this enough that not even the fucker's authority had been enough to prevent her from trying her best to stop the guy. However this had only angered the prick further so, with roughness bordering on violence, the R.I.B. agent threw the young waitress onto his table before ripping the front of her dress open.
THAT had been the point where he could ignore the situation no further and caused him to get out of his seat and walk purposefully over to the R.I.B. bastard. Without even bothering to try and talk the guy into leaving he instead delivered a right hook that successfully put the motherfucker on the ground, but surprisingly the guy'd managed to remain conscious. Without taking his eyes off the source of his anger he'd taken off his jacket and tossed it in the general direction of Lijuan so she could cover herself up. It hadn't been perfect since on someone her size it'd just barely covered her butt, he'd still considered it good enough. When the bozo with delusions of immunity staggered to his feet, spouting the clichéd lines like 'you do not know who you're messing with', he had decided to drive his point home. Shoving the prick until his back was against the wall, he popped two of the claws from his right hand, the far left and far right one, before thrusting them so that they pierced the wood on either side of the butthead's neck. Then, ever so slowly, he extended the middle claw until it was half an inch from the guy's throat.
"These claws of mine… still don't have perfect control over them. Sometimes they slip out of my control," he'd said while looking the asshole right in the eye. "You ever show your face around Lijuan or Turtle's Paradise again and I promise I'll show you just how sharp they really are. You understanding me, bub?"
The R.I.B. agent couldn't nod yes quickly enough and for a moment he'd been satisfied, but it quickly turned to disgust when a foul smell reached his nose.
The asshole had just pissed himself in fear of what'd been implied.
After the loser ran out of the bar both Sadao and Lijuan had expressed their gratitude for his aid and for some reason a feeling of pleasant surprise flowed over his mind before vanishing. It'd almost been as if he'd expected them to attack him, or at least start yelling at him for what he'd done, but that hadn't make any sense so he'd just ignored it. Nevertheless, both of them had been worried about the possible repercussions that could be heading their way once the agent sobered up and remembered how he'd been humiliated. Realizing that in trying to help he may have caused trouble, he promised to hang out in front of the bar and if anyone from the R.I.B. or on orders from the Bureau tried anything, he'd deal with it. For the next two days he'd parked himself outside the bar, taking breaks only to use the bathroom or eat so as to ensure that nothing could be attempted against the Turtle's Paradise or its employees.
It had been on the third day that the R.I.B. agent returned with six of his friends, no doubt believing that numbers would be enough to give him the advantage. Things'd only gotten more interesting when the asshole actually held up an official looking document that basically amounted to an arrest warrant for him, Sadao and Lijuan. The fool also claimed that until further notice the Turtle's Paradise would be shut down until a 'thorough investigation' could be carried out. It'd concerned him that such heavy handed action was being taken but only until he'd spotted the signature at the bottom of the paperwork.
Chi-ryu.
Apparently the condescending paranoid advisor that reminded him a little too much of Snyder had decided to throw his authority behind this petulant form of retaliation. It'd likely only taken the mention of an outsider with metal claws in his fists to get the snooty little prick to sign off on the arrest warrants, as well as the shut down of the Turtle's Paradise. This misuse of power and the agent's behavior were all the excuse he needed to make a decision to aggressively oppose the idiots in front of him and he'd known right where to start.
A right hook and an uppercut later and the agent that'd started the mess had been sent to the ground barely conscious and in no position to give out orders.
Then he'd gone to work on his backup, but despite what his inner anger was beseeching him to do he didn't pop the claws for these guys except in cases to destroy their weird spear rifles. They'd put up a good fight but nowhere near what the assassins had proven capable of, so he'd been able to defeat them without drawing blood. It made him wonder what the recruitment standards were for the R.I.B., because if seven of them couldn't take down a single man with limited hand-to-hand combat skills and involuntary muscle memory-driven movements, then Wutai was in more danger than he'd thought. Nevertheless he'd told the agent and his band of thugs that the Turtle's Paradise and its employees were under his protection and if they knew what was good for them, they'd back off. Their courage deflated the idiots had grudgingly retreated, but he'd known right from that moment that this wouldn't be the end of things. Men willing to abuse their power to avenge a humiliating defeat wouldn't let things go until their very lives were in danger, with it clear that nothing could keep them safe.
So once he'd made sure that the Turtle's Paradise would be safe for the time being he'd slunk off, using his sense of smell to follow the men he'd just defeated. He'd had no doubt they'd be running back to Chi-ryu to report their defeat and ask for further assistance, either in the form of weapons or armed soldiers. It hadn't been easy to follow and not be seen but by paying more attention to his enhanced senses and timing things just right he'd successfully infiltrated the royal grounds. A minute later he watched from a reasonably obscured perch as the R.I.B. agent told the advisor of his failure and THAT led to a tongue lashing that almost managed to impress him. In fact the pre-modern Japanese Snyder had been so upset that he'd ordered the 'lesser men' to leave him rather than give them what they tried to ask for.
It'd only been once he was sure that any reinforcements would be far too distant to be any problem that he'd dropped down from his perch. Sadly he wasn't quite as silent as Logan probably was, so the arrogant man turned the second he heard the sound but he'd been anticipated this, so with all the speed he could muster he crossed the distance and latched onto the man's throat. Latched on TIGHTLY so as to not let so much as a single peep escape from the high and mighty idiot's lips, much less a call for the guards. Also as expected a look of outrage had blossomed on the man's face but, with his throat having difficulties, all Chi-ryu could do was glare angrily. Well, that and pull a knife from somewhere on his person and stab him in the stomach, but he'd been expecting that as well and therefore he'd done his best not to show any reaction at all. The fool then tried three more times in search of a more satisfactory response but he'd managed to keep his face straight and his body language from showing how much pain he was really feeling. When the prick finally stopped, he calmly pulled the knife out of his gut but kept it close so as to ensure that Chi-ryu's eyes would stay focused on that area.
It'd been priceless to watch the man's face as the wound closed itself up before vanishing entirely.
It'd been a bit of a question as to why no one had asked him about his ability to heal after the thwarted assassination but the best answers he'd been able to come up with was either it'd happened to quick for others to see or one of the trained killers' bodies had been in the way. As for his claws, Godo and his people likely presumed that he'd simply taken knives out from somewhere and put them back in the same place. After all, while the Final Fantasy Seven universe was odd, no one here could heal from serious injuries in a matter of seconds without the right potion or the right materia. Maybe they'd thought he'd had materia on him and cast a cure spell without them seeing it? In the end it didn't matter because Chi-ryu was floored by the ineffectiveness of his blade, so it was time to show what he had to offer. Holding up his free hand just in front of the man's face, he'd popped his claws, nearly giving the man a heart attack with the suddenness of it all.
From there he'd told the man in VIVID detail how he was going to leave the Turtle's Paradise Bar and everyone attached to it alone or he'd come by for another visit and it'd be a LOT more PAINFUL. He'd then punctuated his statement by giving the man a flesh wound on the upper arm before throwing the bastard onto his desk, then he bugged out.
He'd made it halfway to the wall surrounding the royal grounds before the alarm went out, proving that Chi-ryu was just as stupid as he looked. It'd been a bit of a tight fit getting past the guards but in the end no one'd seen him leave and he'd just faded into the night. After that things were pretty quiet and the R.I.B. steered clear of the Turtle's Paradise altogether and any trouble from the cocksucker advisor also went away. He'd concluded that the man had raised the alarm in the hopes that he'd be captured swiftly so that retaliation could be carried out quietly, but when that failed the asshole's pride caused him to drop the matter.
Pride and fear, that is.
It hadn't been until a week had gone by that he'd come up with a way to keep trouble from ever heading Turtle's Paradise's way ever again: he'd open his own bar! It'd been a whim at first but, the more he'd thought on the matter, the more it made sense to him. By having his own bar all the people that were pissed at him would come to his place to cause trouble rather than Sadao's bar and he was much more likely able to handle said trouble. When there wasn't trouble Sadao and him could refer business to each other and, if Chi-ryu tried to shut one of them down, the employees could get hired on by the other bar. If the Snyder wannabe tried to shut down both bars, that'd get noticed by everyone in the village and hopefully Godo himself, making an explanation something of a requirement. The future ruler of Wutai hadn't backed down in the face of the advisor, or at least showed a willingness to question the bastard's position. Unless the current emperor of Wutai had unusual levels of trust in his advisor, Chi-ryu would have no choice but to drop any retaliation plans until a more advantageous opportunity presented itself.
Now he was standing outside of his bar that had been built just how he wanted it, being a mix of local architecture styles while also bearing a resemblance to how the original Princess Bar had been depicted in the comic books. It'd been difficult since he was no artist and some things he'd been forced to draw since it'd been impossible for him to describe it well enough for the builders. Nevertheless he couldn't argue with the end results, so with a smile he moved over to the door to put out the 'OPEN' sign so everyone passing by could see that they now had a choice of bars. He also put out a 'HELP WANTED' sign since he sincerely doubted he could run the entire show solo and having a pretty waitress could help bring in customers.
However he'd make it clear to customers from the very first day she worked that this was a 'look but do not touch' environment and that people who got too tactile with the waitress would be asked to leave. How long they'd be kept out would depend on how far they went with the touching and how well they responded to the requests to stop. He'd be willing to make some exceptions if he knew the person wasn't normally bad and only got that way when drunk, but otherwise he'd keep a hard line with customers.
Opening the door, he put the necessary signs out and gazed about the area he'd chosen to build the bar in, seeing every person there as potential customers for his bar.
Time to see if I have the right stuff for running a business, he thought with a grin before closing the door and going back inside.