Tournaments Aren't Everything Ch. 2 - A Future and a Foot
By Simon Corby

The two men looked on as the man named ‘Ryu’ exited his room.

“Are you alright Sir!” they both said in unison as Ryu headed for the elevator, the concerned tone in their voices made Ryu stop and turn towards them. Ryu looked puzzled, and was about to say ‘what are you talking about’ when he realised that his left eye was still throbbing with pain.

“Oh! Err. Yes I’m fine,” he calmly said, but he realized that it was not going to convince the two men, and decided to quickly walk away so to avoid a long conversation about, ‘what happened?’

Ryu continued to the elevator until he was about 5 feet away from it, then he swung his left foot 90 degrees and started to walk instead to the stairs.

“Almost” he mumbled to himself, but the two men still heard him, which prompted them to turn towards each other and mirror the puzzled look on each other’s faces.

Ryu always loved training and he saw walking as an easy way to ‘train’ wherever he was. So in simple fact, if walking were an alternative, Ryu would usually take it.

Ryu finally reached the bottom of the stairs and walked across the lobby area to the exit, again concerned faces were all around him, but he ignored them and opened the exit doors…

‘DING!’ the elevator rang as the doors opened and Ken Masters entered the elevator. He reached out and pressed the button for ‘his’ floor, as the doors enclosed him inside a small smile came across his face.

“God, I love money,” he sighed to himself cheerfully, and this was evident, after all, he had a entire floor to himself, his family bank balance quadrupled that of Bill Gates, and he pretty much had whatever anybody could ever want, well nearly, but that will be sorted out in a few days. Another smile graced his face, this one even bigger than the last.

“Soon, we will reunite,” he said as he clenched his fist, and as if it was scripted, another ‘DING!’ came from the elevator and the doors opened, unveiling Ken’s room.

‘My Own little space,’ as he called it, even if the room was anything but little. Now in most rooms, the bed is the biggest eye catcher and it usually takes up half of the floor space. Correct? But Ken’s room… No… In fact the bed looked like it was in the middle of a football pitch. The room was that immense. Ken took a quick sprint and jumped onto his bed. He lay there for a few seconds and then shot up and reached for his Red Gi, he quickly changed and headed once again for the elevator. After all he must keep training especially if they were going to be reunited. The doors opened and he quickly entered and pressed the Basement button, which was his personal gym.

A dreary buzz came from the machine as it filled the polystyrene cup with coffee; she remembered that she needed to buy two cups, well after she knocked over the sergeant’s cup earlier on, it was the least she could do. The machine finished and Chun Li picked up both cups, one in each hand. The heat of the coffee passed straight through the polystyrene and she felt its warmth in her palms, it felt rather nice, it almost felt like she had built up chi in her hands. She started to walk back to the main office floor, when she got there she didn’t see the sergeant anyway. However she did see a woman at his desk; she wore a dark uniform and had long dark hair, she also had, what could only be described as a cat-like face. She looked up at Chun Li and saluted her.

“Good Morning Officer Chun Li,” she said in a military voice.

“Ah… Good Morning Officer Juli” Chun Li said back, and with a slight giggle in her voice said “At ease!”

Juli then saw the ‘lost’ look in Chun Li’ eyes… and the two cups of coffee in her hands, and immediately guessed who she was looking for.

“I take it you are looking for the Sergeant…” Juli asked Chun Li in her ‘always serious’ tone,

“Err… Yes! Where is her?” Chun Li questioned,

“He’s in Intelligence.” Juli answered as she picked up her paperwork off the table, it was also about the Shadowlaw case.

“Well, I’ve got to take this to the Chief Superintendent, see you later Officer Chun Li”

“Yes, see ya! Juli” Chun Li said and then quickly shouted, “Don’t bump into any coffee…” which prompted a smirk from Juli as Chun Li headed for the Intelligence office.

Chun Li eventually reached the intelligence office doors; she entered and was immediately blinded by the light of 100 surveillance monitors. Each Monitor was connected to a computer, which could view Closed Circuit Television pictures from the respective country that the monitor surveyed. However she still managed to see the Sergeant sitting in the far corner viewing the ‘Japan’ Monitor. She approached him and hearing her footsteps the Sergeant turned to her.

“Oh! Thanks Chun Li”, he said with a smile on his face, Chun Li was rather surprised, she didn’t expect him to be this polite, but she still returned the smile.

“Sorry about earlier on…”

“Ah don’t worry about it, after all, we all have accidents,”

‘Excuse me?’ Chun Li thought to herself, ‘this is coming from a person that was cursing me to h*ll earlier on, I don’t get it…’

“So what are you looking at?” Chun Li asked with puzzled look on her face.

“I am trying to find that man, ah… what’s his name…” he scratches his head “you know Chun Li the one who killer Bison”; Chun Li’s heart stopped as she realised who he was talking about.

“Y… You mean… Ryu…?” she managed to splutter out. The Sergeant turned to her again with a smile on his face.

“What’s wrong…? Are you having a heart attack…?” he said with a good idea of why Chun Li spluttered. Chun Li turned a slight shade of red and because of this the Sergeant chuckled and turned back to the Monitor.

“Hey up!” he said as the hotel doors opened and the image of a man carrying a duffel bag appeared. Chun Li smiled, “so there you are Ryu,” she said, however her smile quickly turned into a look of concern as they saw a silhouette of a person hiding around the corner in the alleyway.

Ryu took a deep breath as he exited the hotel, he looked up and saw the neon sign on the building opposite, it said that the time was 10:12. ‘Gees!’ He thought to himself ‘tomorrow by this time, I’ll be on that plane to America’ a smile emerged from his mouth, ‘and Ken, We will meet again.’ Ryu then turned and started to walk down the street, he just passes the alleyway when he hears footsteps rapidly approaching. He turns.

The attacker screamed “Hi-Ya!”, and a foot was aimed at Ryu's head. Thankfully though, Ryu blocked the attack without even looking, and quickly turned to take a gimp’s of the mystery attacker…