Hello everyone, I'm back. I know it has been a while and I apologize. I lost my spark for this story because no one wanted to play Tekken with me anymore. But I did start this story, and I owe it to myself to finish it. I'm trying to get back into the grove, thanks for sticking with me for so long.

The movie was way better than Liam initially thought. It was pretty funny to the point Lili laughed then snorted as she laughed. Everyone heard her, and looked at Lili. She noticed of how strange it must have been so pretended nothing happened, and took a handful of Leo's candy, and started to chew on it so she could say anything to embarrass herself.

"You're not going to say something?" Leo whispered to Asuka.

"Nah, it's too easy." She shrugged.

Leo nodded and leaned back into her chair. For the rest of the movie, everyone had a few good laughs, Asuka laughed when she wanted to along with Liam and Leo. But for Lili, she wasn't used to the amount of comedy on the screen so it became elongated snickers as she had her index and middle finger over her lips. As if that helps. Liam scoffed.

It was a rather nice movie, and the group all gathered their belongings. They all left the movie with content expressions. This was surprisingly, the first time each of them did something with a friend. Liam realized that, but refrained from saying something about it.

"I thought it was cool, American movies love to make hero movies. Like Bruno Delinger from the Crystal Trap." Asuka raised her hands toward the sky. It was in the late afternoon as the orange light reflected off the buildings. The air was clear between her and Liam as Leo caught on to the aura of the group.

Whatever it was, I'm glad they sorted it all out. Leo lightly punched Lili's arm.

"Was that a challenge?" She lifted her chin slightly, mentally prepared to give the onlookers a show of her abilities.

"No, just felt like doing that."

"So Liam, we know you're from America, what really brought you to Japan."

"I already told you, I wanted to experience the culture. My Uncle Howard often reminisced about the people he met when he was serving the Legion. He used to know people from Europe, Africa, and America. All the people he met during his travels. It was infectious and I decided to do a bit of exploring."

"It looks like we won't get much out of him." Leo walked ahead of everyone. "Do we press a button and will it repeat itself again?" Liam caught onto what Leo meant.

"Fine, five years ago. I got into a fight with three other kids, I don't remember much but I do remember the aftermath. The parents of each of them were upset with me despite the testimony of a neighbor who saw the whole thing. I was provoked and I beat the kids into submission as it was an outburst of my sadness and anger. It was just shortly after that I was in the custody of Howard. Normally, I would have been handed to Child Services but he was back from a long tour in time and claimed me. So in the week after that event, the school didn't know what to think of me. I overheard a teacher call me a 'monster.' Howard heard the same thing and was furious about it and pulled me out of the school. He searched for new place to live and we moved away two weeks later." Liam kept talking alongside his friends.

"He's been family and my mentor ever since. He was worried about me being bullied again by people so he taught me how to fight with my hands. I was a difficult experience, Howard considered taking a vacation to the Sahara desert so I would train the same way as he did. We did go to the Sahara, but on the second day, he got heat stroke. We came back home several days later." Liam chuckled. Ahead of them was Combot, it was still staring at the birds with a bag of bird feed.

"One day, he found all of my research of Japan and noticed that I was often isolated from the other kids during middle school. He took it upon himself for me to register at a Japanese school. He got the paperwork for the Mishima Academy. We talked about it and we agreed that this was a great opportunity. He's the reason why I'm here." By the time Liam finished his monologue they were all sitting at a bench. Combot took a small about of feed then gently tossed it around. When it did, it was covered in birds but it rotated its torso for them to get off.

"Wow." Asuka exclaimed.

"I don't want pity, it happened in the past. I don't want it influence me to be some angsty moron about it." Liam looked around. Leo had a blank smile, the kind of where you process information but you're not condescending about what you just learned.

"We all have problems, I don't think we've should have been so pushy about it." Asuka looked at her watch. "I think we should get back, the tournament is going to start again in three hours.

"Sounds like a plan." After Lili said that, Combot was running in circles as there were five birds angrily hopping behind it. On the helmet was a cracked bird egg. Soon Combot just stopped then tried to swat the birds as it would against insects. Lili snickered at the sight and was the only one to be laughing. She noticed that everyone wasn't so she went back to her serious expression. After several minutes the birds finally left Combot alone.

"Maybe birds aren't you're thing." Asuka said as the group made their way back to the hotel. During the walk, the group had several bits of small talk. While on the way though, the visited a couple of stores to window shop. Lili was pompous, Leo was eccentric, Asuka cracked her jokes, and Liam just tagged along.

When they walked through the main doors, the other contestants had looks of excitement. Liam was the last one to enter the hotel doors.

"Hey Liam, over here." A round man called. Liam narrowed his vision to see Bob waving him over.

"See you later." Leo spoke for the group. Liam nodded as he and Combot walked to the couch of where Bob was lounging at.

"What's up?"

"There's news that the something new of going to happen at the tournament. I don't know what, but it has me pretty excited." Bob looked to his left.

Liam followed the gaze to see literal walking piece of wood. It had a cylinder wooden torso with markings on the back, along with rectangle limbs and two iron balls where the hands should me. The eyes of it had a low glow of orange. It had a rough humanoid shape. Liam wanted to guess if it was some sort of other project similar to Combot.

"I'm not gonna ask about it." Liam said as he looked back at Bob.

"I don't understand it either." Bob laughed.

Liam continued to look around to see woman in light blue jeans with a cowhide jacket. She looked to be in hear early twenties. Her jet black hair was tied back in two black ponytails, and wore red thick framed glasses. She looked to be Native American, but someone about her off put Liam. She looked like she descended from an Asian country. Just because I don't see anything of her personality, doesn't mean I can judge. Liam tilted his head left and right, it a 'whatever' gesture. Combot noticed it and mimicked it.

"Anyways, I just wanted to give you a heads up before we continue the tournament tonight."

"Sure thing." Liam said as he did light wave to Bob. He looked away and continued to watch the other contestants in the lobby. "I'll see you in the ring tonight."

"Got it."

Liam walked back to his room by taking the elevator. Combot was getting pretty low on its battery life since the day was long. Its left pincer tapped its helmet as a way of knocking sense to central processor.

"Why did you recharge yourself today?" Liam rubbed his forehead.

Combot looked to the group and slouched its robotic shoulders.

Liam sighed. "Okay, there is still about two hours of sunlight left, go get as much as you can get and meet me in room. Sound good?"

Combot straightened its posture and outstretched its left arm. The pincer rotated and kept making odd extensions of the pincer. It was like, Combot was trying to do a hand gesture. Finally when the elevator doors opened up. Combot raised both arms in frustration. So on a whim, the pincer claw was held out as half of it was aligned with the arm forward and the other half of the pincer was sticking up. It was Combot's way of giving the American 'thumbs up' expression of okay, or understood.

Liam did a light smile as he pressed the button to go to the roof. "I'll see you in a bit buddy." The elevator doors closed and Liam walked into his room and drank several cups of water. He did some stretches to prepare himself for the night ahead. So he laid out his clothes that would be comfortable to wear, after he took a shower.

Liam decided to go with a grey shirt with a black cartoony skull in front with a white checkered button up shirt with yellow lines. He tugged on his dark blue and black camouflaged shorts, with his grey athletic shoes.

Fully prepped, Liam took another drink of water from the tap. When he did, the door opened up for Liam to see Combot walking in. The monitor on the chest was showing a green rectangle with it three fourths full. Combot wooped and beeped.

"We got this." Liam said in a confident tone. He raised his fist. Combot looked at Liam and back to his fist. It didn't know what to do. So Liam took one pincer of Combot and closed it but with his other hand he guided it to his fist. At the end of showing it what to do. Liam officially taught Combot the fistbump.

"Alright, now we got this." Liam made a fist. Combot closed its pincer and brought it to Liam. It bumped and Combot nodded.

The anime I referenced in the previous chapter was "The Devil is a Part-Timer" a nice show that takes cool artwork and mediocre characters in the real world setting… kinda. I'm curious, do any of you like what I'm doing with Combot? I thought it would be fun to have it learn and do stuff humans do. Well, please review, and have a lovely day.

RobertD92: Yeah, I didn't want to have a definitive change to Asuka's and Liam relationship. I know it was odd of me to do so, but I kept getting a couple PMs asking me a lot of relationship questions. I haven't really thought it out too much, but I'll return to it eventually, probably. I haven't thought too deep on a mentor character because I that's what I do with Howard. But as in for a rival, I think I have something in mind. Have a great day.

CrystalMoonlightll: I thought my OC needed to a nice average fighter. Not all god mode to be the very best. I hate writing stuff like that, so thanks for noticing. I plan to have longer story arcs with Liam in the future, so I'm saving some of the nicer bits for the future stories of the ones he's going to be involved in. Thank you so much for reading.

ChronoBaron: Liam to me is an average fighter. Be new to the tournament has to be tough, so it was nice idea for me to work with. Yeah, anger has a way to help. In Liam's case, the rage mode helped him in beating up his friends.

GRIMMJOW10: I believe Leo is still left unknown to the audience. I don't have any real thoughts on Leo's true gender, but I did have Leo be a girl just for the story. But thank you so much for reading.