Go East, Young Ninjette

Kozue was surprised to see Jackie with a purse. Didn't strike her as a purse sort of person, but in her defense, she looked like she was trying to rock it and doing a decent job.

"Yeah, the place is a little...eh. You'll see" Kozue shrugged it off as she settled into her car along with Jackie, navigating their way through Japanese rush hour traffic. Traveling to and from the arena so much, she'd actually gotten used to sliding her way through this little part of Japan, got to familiarize herself with the place. Kind of a shame she was going to hit the reset button on all of it.

It wasn't long before they came upon the place. A little out of the way, around a few corners most people wouldn't take, but that was probably the point. The place looked something taken straight from Ireland, not something you'd expect from an Irish pub, or an American pub trying to be an Irish pub. Open seats, ales from all over Europe, and it just so happened to be the only place Kozue knew of in Kyoto that ever played hockey and football games. The perfect spot for tourists, immigrants trying to ease into things at their own pace, or Japanese folk who wanted something completely different.

Kozue put it in park and started to make her way inside. "This is it. Like? Dislike?"

Jackie cast a critical eye over the place, before giving a shrug. "It's a bit more of a novelty pub than I was hoping for, but in this town it's about as close as they'll ever get. Besides, they've got my poison of choice on tap," she added, noting the familiar marking for Guiness set on one of the large pull-draws. The bar wasn't empty, though not heaving with bodies either, with a handful of people keeping to small clusters and going about their business. A few were engaged in some inane chatter over a game of pool, several more watched the football playing on the TV, giving boisterous cries and jeers at the screen that reminded Jackie a lot of the crowds she'd seen at the Tension matches. A couple did turn to take note of the unlikely pair of girls walking on it, but Jackie ignored them, moving to the bar and taking a seat as she caught the barman's attention.

"Set me up with a bar tab," she said with a smile, producing the card she used to buy drinks at Armando's expense, "And stick a pint of Guiness on it. Kozue, what are you having?"

Kozue had been raised with Japanese culture, but she spent more than her fair share of time out of the house, too, and she'd seen bars all across America. She didn't have a problem with the Japanese nightlife, but she couldn't help but warm up to this atmosphere, too. It was like going home for a little while. Nothing wrong with that.

"Let's see, let's see, let us see..." She sat beside Jackie and scanned over the menu, taking in the selection and asking herself what she always wanted to get but could never quite afford. "I'm feeling sweet. Murphy's Irish Stout, hit me up." She drummed her hands along the bar a few times, then swiveled back to Jackie. "So, been talking a lot about me, but what about you? How's an Irish girl get her way to Japan? Run out of assholes and bitches to beat up on your own island?"

Jackie turned in her seat to face Kozue a little more fully, one elbow propped against the counter top as she waited for her drink. "Ireland will never be free of arseholes and bitches, but I've not been back there for a good long while now. I started up on the indie circuit, tried to get into the UK scene, but it was mostly the kind of showy, posturing crap you see a lot in the low level tiers. AFW has it's fair share of that stuff too, I mean it's all putting on a show still, just the crowds bigger, but it has room to indulge more serious competition, and that's always been the thing for me."

Jackie paused as the barman set the glasses down before them both, taking a sip from hers before she continued in her heavily-doctored account of her past, "Since the stuff going on in Britain wasn't for me, I went further afield to Europe and the more serious scene. Bounced around for a few years, did all sorts of crazy shit, started to build my reputation on getting into fights with people a whole lot bigger than me. Not that that was hard to do," another pause, another deep gulp, "I took some pretty nasty beatings, but I quickly picked up on some tricks. Most of the competition were big burly guys, who were used to fighting other big burly guys head-on, so I had the advantage of their lack of experience to play off of. That netted me a few wins, and by the time people started paying attention I'd honed my style down, gotten pretty good at it too. Good enough that I wound up catching the eye of a talent scout. And so here I am, in this crazy little corner of the world."

As accounts went, it was heavily abridged, and didn't go into how far she'd went in some of her matches, how close she'd come to getting kicked out of some of those indie feds for "unnecessary levels of violence". "It's not a very exciting story I guess, I mean mine doesn't involve ninjas or anything," she added with a grin.

Kozue's drink came just as Jackie was finishing up her story, giving her something to sip while she absorbed. She was familiar the rambling lifestyle, moving from state to state, rarely hanging in one city for longer than a week, but Jackie seemed to do the same thing with countries. The reasons were different, but they both stayed adrift. She hadn't mentioned anything about family, either, so it was a safe bet there wasn't anything worth mentioning there. One more thing they had in common.

"Yeah, ninjas make everything better. I don't know, though, you've been around a lot. You might have a few ninjas in there and you don't even know it." She held up her glass and looked it over. Nice, black body, rich white foam at the top. Kozue brought it to her face and drew the scent into her nostrils, long and deep. Heavy with roasted malt, but there was some coffee in there, too. Little molasses, little caramel. Nice and sweet. "Oh, that's good." She shivered, getting goosebumps. Nothing quite like the smell of quality. "Okay, quid pro quo in a minute, but you gotta get a smell of this first. See where the money's going." She brought the mug halfway between them, offering it up.

As Kozue held the glass before Jackie to get a good scent of, the Irish woman fought the urge to lean back from it. Her reflexes told her to avoid it, that it was a trick, but she pushed them down and forced herself to remain still - her instincts were honed to avoid leaving herself vulnerable, but she knew that most people wouldn't see a threat in what Kozue was doing. Leaning forward, trying not to appear too stiff or let on that her body was tensed and ready to jump back, Jackie took a deep breath through her nose, taking in the sweet, heady aroma. She was so focused on hiding her discomfort that Jackie couldn't keep the surprise from her face.

"Well fuck me, seems like you know your stuff," she said, with a modicum of actual respect, "A little sweeter than I tend to go, I'm more into the bitter side of things personally, but it's a good choice. Well, a toast then," she said, lifting her glass and offering it out as she straightened up, "To other people buying your drinks."

Kozue beamed with a little pride, eager to soak up praise whenever and wherever she could get it. If there was one thing she knew, one thing over else, it was her beer. She'd made a game out of sampling as much as she could in her travels, and eventually got into the more serious scene, joining a few tasting websites. It was nice to try Murphy's at long last, she'd heard good things.

"Heard, loud and clear." She clashed glasses with Jackie and took a big gulp, closing her eyes as it went down to really focus on the taste, let all her other senses rest for a bit. Her lips had a thin mustache of foam when she pulled back, and it was quickly pulled out.

"Okay." Kozue sat the mug down and crossed her leg, still turned towards Jackie. "You wanted to hear about the ninja thing, right? Let's get to it, story time." She tapped her chin and tried to think of a good place to start. The beginning seemed ideal. "What do you know about the mafia? In America, anyway."

That certainly wasn't a question Jackie had expected to be posed when Kozue started her story on why she'd gone with a ninja gimmick. She gave a shrug as she considered it, "Well, outside of films and stuff like that not a whole lot, and I doubt those are the most authentic sources of information on the subject."

She leant against the bar with an openly curious expression, getting a little more comfortable as she took another drink from her glass. This certainly sounded like a story that could go in interesting directions, and perhaps offer a little further insight into the way Kozue operated. The more she could get about this woman, the better she could potentially pull on any strings she learnt of at a later date.

Kozue nodded Jackie's way and took a longer gulp this time, knocking the glass down halfway. She hadn't given it much thought, but this was the first time she'd ever bothered to talk about her family history out loud, at least since she left home. It didn't start coming off the tongue easy.

She sat the mug down and idly slid it back and forth on the bar, while she started to form the story in her head. "Okay." She held up her hand. "Here's the story, feel free to laugh where appropriate. Turn of the century, early 1900's, Prohibition Era. My great granddad's looking for an edge, right? He was the head of this family in Jersey, getting knocked around a bit. Carmine's his name. Carmine's a little..." She waved her hand around a bit, looking for the right word. Didn't want to disrespect the dead. "...off." Yeah, that worked.

"But he's also a student of history. Japanese history, especially. Big fan. So he gets this idea and delves really, really deep into it. Crazydeep. He starts integrating Japanese culture into our own. He changes his name. His first and his last. Guido Sarducchi to Yoshiro Kaburagi. He starts using guerilla tactics, ninja shit, striking in the darkness, freaks people out, they don't know what the fuck's going on. And it kind of works, that's the insane thing."

She took a short break for another sip, glad that the words were flowing easier than she'd thought they would. It was nice to explain this, just for once. Or try to. "Following me so far? Questions?" She smirked and ran a hand over her mouth, wiping it clean. "Might be a test on this when I'm done, pay attention."

Jackie was pretty sure that while she understood the individual words Kozue had spoken, the sentences they formed were utterly insane. She folded her arms across her chest, her incredulity evident in her body language.

"Ninja mobsters? Seriously?" She said flatly, "You're from a line of mafia types that just upped and decided to become black pajama-wearing assassins? Like the guy who took over from your great grandfather thought it was a good idea to keep that up?"

Jackie shook her head, and took a deep gulp from her glass. "Seriously, only in fucking America would you hear a story like that," she said with a chuckle, "OK, so your family obviously ran with this idea, but you don't seem keen on the family, so where's the link here?"