All characters belong to Capcom except for the ones that I
created. And as far as continuity goes well let's just say that this
is after Alpha 3, but none of the later SF have happened or will
happen in this universe. If you're going to send messages in regards to the
fic on the list please send it to me as well because I'm currently
on vacation mode.

The New Challengers

Chapter 1

The Anaku Butterfly a rare sight to see landed ever so gently
on the jungle floor. It stretched its ornate wings to its fullest extent.
Light hues of green and blue beauty radiated from the insect presenting
a grand exposition of the very last of its kind.
"Ahhhhh! A bug!"
Hikari Toukotsu quickly brought her shoe down so as to smash the
creature into a fine paste. She had not bothered to look at it very long,
but from past experience over the last few days she came to the conclusion
that the only good bug is a dead one.
It was still surprising to her how big this jungle was. She pulled out the
map from her backpack and looked it over again. It had written on it: Go
through rainforest and get to temple. She shoved it back into her backpack
and reminded herself to never buy maps from anyone wearing a black
and yellow bandanna again.
She once again saw that the brief patch of land not covered in vines had
indeed come to a halt. She sighed and reached for her switch blade and
popped out the small blade to cut the vine.
"Hmmm... Maybe I should have bought the machete instead... But it doesn't
have this cool picture of Megumi on it like this one does!" Hikari shouted
as she marveled at the pop idol's visage thus causing a beast that had been
resting in the brush. Only a slight snarl gave Hikari warning of the tiger
that lept at her intent on mauling her from behind. Hikari
turned around and saw the orange creature coming down on her.
"Tiger!"
Suddenly the beast was knocked on its side. It had been
too preoccupied with the girl to see what had hit it, but
did realize that several of its bones were broken. Turning
its head the tiger saw another human although considerably
larger. Fully covered in a brown robe from head to toe, the tiger
could not see his newfound opponent, but he certainly felt something
resonating from it. Power.
Growling the tiger turned away and lept back into the jungle.
Hikari stood there in a state of shock until a deep voice called out,
"What are you doing here?"
Still shaking Hikari looked at the huge robed figure standing
before her. She tried to formulate an answer, but nothing came out.
The giant spoke again,"I asked you once girl and I will not ask you again!
Why are you here?"
"Uh... Well... I... was looking for The Emperor," she stuttered out
never taking her eyes off the intimidating gargantuan.
A large hand wrapped in gauze came out from the robe and
the giant made a waving motion at the top of his head.
"He's about this tall?" he queried.
"Yes!" Hikari shouted.
The giant put his hand forward and asked,"He has huge hands
covered with gauze?"
"Yes!"Hikari shouted again.
A massive leg came thrusting from the seams of the robes and
ended upraised with the knee held forward.
"And he makes fast kicks like that?"
"Yes! Have you seen him?" Hikari nearly screamed out in excitement.
The man seemed to ponder the question for a few seconds and then
said,"No, never seen him."
Hikari's shoulders almost caved in and she said,"Oh, okay."
The robed figure said,"Do you need any more help?"
Hikari said,"Well, yeah I do-"
"Good. I'll be going now," the figure turned away and walked
back into the jungle. Hikari blinked and remained stationary
for a few seconds before something came to her.
"Wait a minute," she said,"That man... That man... That man
could lead me to The Emperor!"
With that said Hikari quickly went after the robed man cutting
through the jungle vine with her Megumi pocket knife.
---
The water poured down his head rolling off his massive
shoulders highlighting his muscles with a gleam. Most of
the time that he spent under the waterfall was for practicing
one of his techniques, but now he was thinking.
He had spent several years in the jungles of Thailand. All
of them spent waiting for his rival to appear. His rival could
not have forgotten him for he wasn't a pathetic waste like
most people were who remembered things only in the short
term. And he was most certainly not too afraid to face him
or thought him not worth his time. Such things would not
befit one with his character.
Which lead him to two conclusions: Either his rival did not
believe himself to be truly worthy of the match or he was dead.
For all of his previous curses of the boy, and for all of his
attempts by any means to destroy the boy, Sagat truly hoped
that Ryu Hoshi was not dead. If not for the fact that he was the
only man worthy of defeating him, but that there was something
out there that could actually kill him.
His thoughts would have continued had he not heard through the
pounding of the waterfall twigs snapping. Quickly jumping from
the cascading liquids Sagat landed on the bank of the river near
where the rustling was coming from.
Sagat raised his hands and raised his right knee into the air in a defensive
pose waiting for the men to come out of the jungle. It was obviously not a
beast for he had scared all of them away from the river bank and Sagat knew
that it wasn't by no means below Bison to send assassins to kill former
employees.
"Show yourselves now and I promise you a quick death!" Sagat
shouted to the rustling bushes. What jumped out surprised him
more than any Bison flunky could have.
"Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasedon'tkillme!"
There was a small girl with a backpack kowtowing in front of him
while shouting the irritating mantra over and over again. Sagat
blinked his one good eye and nearly fell over in shock. It was
the same girl that he had saved just that day!
"Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasedon'tkillme!"
How had she followed him?
"Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasedon'tkillme!"
Why had she followed him?
"Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasedon'tkillme!"
Why was he allowing her to continue talking?
"Quiet!" he shouted at the girl. She immediately stopped
and looked up at him from her position on the ground.
"How did you find this place?" he asked after a long period
of silence.
The girl blinked and said,"Well, I used all the incredible tracking skills
that I've learned over the years..."he scowled and she said,"uh,
actually I just followed the path of knocked over trees."
Sagat rubbed the base of his temple with his fingers and reminded
himself to stop doing that. Than he asked,"Why are you here?"
"To find you," she said almost shyly. Then he remembered
what she had said earlier that day,"So, you were searching for
The Emperor?"
She shook her head and said,"Yeah, did that big guy in the robes
tell you about me?"
It truly is a bizarre sight to a see a seven foot tall man
facefault and Hikari would contend to that. She studied the
giant as he righted himself and concluded that he outlived all
of the images that she had seen of him from any magazine
or television show.
His muscles were humongous and seemed to stretch out
forever and his whole body seemed to be just too large to
be contained. The scar across his chest was even more
evident than his muscles. It started on the lower right side
of his stomach and stretched towards his left shoulder.
It seemed to come right out at her as she stared at it.
His missing eye and the small scars on his head made
him even more intimidating.
All she could think was,'wow!'
Sagat to put it mildly was not as impressed with Hikari.
He had not taken the time to look at her earlier and now
simply thought that it wasn't worth his or anyone's time
to look at her. Her face was covered with freckles and acne
and her brown hair unevenly fell over her face.
She was most certainly weak with all the
baby fat hanging on her arms. And the fat didn't stop there.
It seemed to cling to her whole body and the weakness
shown in her movements under typical Japanese school
girl outfit made him wonder how in God's
name she had managed to survive this long in the jungle.
Hikari stopped studying him when she noticed that he
was looking her over as well. She asked,"Uh, you're probably
wondering why I'm here?"
"It crossed my mind," he stated sarcastically.
Hikari took in a deep breath and started.
"Well, I've been a big fan of yours since I was a little girl. I
saw all your matches on TV and then you went away. I always
wanted to know what happened to you, but I had school and
everything so I couldn't do anything about it. But when I took my
summer break for the first year of high school I really began to
think about you again and what a great a fighter you were and
how nothing was going right at home or at school and how I always
wanted to find you and ask-and ask you-and ask you-"
"Yes?" he boomed out annoyed at her stuttering.
"I wanted to ask you if you would train me." She finished.
They stood there for a while in silence until Sagat snorted and
said,"Hmph. I would never teach a weak stripling like you."
Hikari's eyes welled up with water and tears flowed down her face
as she ran away from the Muay Thai master. Sagat blinked as the
girl fled from him bawling like crazy. A scowl marked his face
and he jumped into the air flipping so as to cut off the girl from
running away.
Hikari stopped dead in her tracks when she found Sagat standing
in front of her with his arms held across his chest. He looked sternly
at her and said,"You're just going to give up like that?"
Hikari sniffled and said,"Uh... yes."
"After obsessing over me for all these years you're going to just
give up when I call you a weak stripling?" he chided.
She began to cry even harder and Sagat shouted,"What?!"
"You called me that again!" she shouted through her tears.
"What? A weak stripling?" he pondered and amazingly enough
more tears came pouring out from her eyes. The noise was proving
to be too much for Sagat who tried to recall what his father
had done when he cried as a child. Then it came to him.
Sagat thrust his fist forward and shouted,"Stop crying now or
I'll give you something to REALLY cry about!"
Hikari continued to cry and Sagat was out of ideas.
He mumbled to himself,"God, I wish I hadn't said anything."
Hikari stopped sobbing and said,"Really?"
"Huh?" he said.
"So, you're apologizing!" she yelled gleefully.
"No! I would never take back what I-"
"Master Sagat apologized to me! Master Sagat apologized to me!"
she chanted as she began to run circles around him.
"I did no such thi-"
"Now, he's gonna train me to be a great fighter just like him!"
"I will not!" he shouted and she stopped running so as to stand
in front of him. Her big brown eyes looked up into his face and she
asked,"You won't?"
"For the last time no! I will not teach you how to fight! Leave!" he
punctuated the last word by pointing to the spot in the jungle where
she had come out from. Hikari straightened herself and said,"Okay,
I'll go."
"Thank God," Sagat said loud enough for her to hear.
She surprised him when she didn't cry, but merely said,"I still want
to learn how to fight and if you won't teach me than I guess I'll have
to find someone else who will," Sagat huffed at the comment and
she finished,"Do you know where Ryu Hoshi lives?"
A nerve sprang forward on Sagat's bald head and he whispered,"Ryu?"
"Yeah, I thought that maybe he would be able to teach me how to
fight since he was good enough to beat you," she said with no hint
of mean spiritedness.
Another nerve sprang forward on Sagat's bald head.
"Then he beat you on several other occasions. Come to think of
it I can't think of a time when you did beat him," Hikari continued
not noticing that Sagat's face was red with rage.
"Maybe I've been following the wrong guy all these years," Hikari
said totally oblivious to the sound of Sagat's teeth crushing together.
"Your first lesson will begin tomorrow, girl."
Hikari blinked and said,"What?"
Sagat growled and repeated himself,"Your first lesson will
begin tomorrow, girl. You probably won't survive the first
few days of training, but I will try teach you how to fight."
Hikari squealed in delight and jumped to hug Sagat
around the waist. "Oh, this is the happiest day of my life!"
Shuddering at the touch of the girl Sagat felt himself
already regretting his decision.

End Chapter 1

Until I find better things to write about. Ja ne.