014

Ah, the modern world, with modern amenities. Jaguar had missed it on an unconscious level from the moment that he arrived in El Dorado, and Orario was little better. Flush toilets, fast food, and the internet!

Jaguar just stood there for a few moments, taking it in.

That being said, a young boy in furs stood out, and a simple cloth garment was hardly any better, so his first order of business was to change. Steal some washing off a line. Not a school uniform, a nondescript shirt and set of shorts. His sandals were close enough to something that would be worn in a modern setting to pass muster, so he didn't need to swipe any of those.

He could spend divine energy to change the form of his raiment, but it wasn't an automatic process, after all. Similarly, he could muddle the perception of people that looked at him to make his furs seem normal and unremarkable, but that was even more expensive. The sort of thing that old and powerful gods did to show off that they were old and powerful and didn't need to keep up with the times and clothing styles, he imagined.

The second order of business was to pawn a trinket.

A simple golden cup. One of literally dozens of similar artifacts that had been automatically dredged up and brought to Jaguar's demiplane as he became more and more entrenched in the consciousness of El Dorado as the god they had been sacrificing their artwork and trinkets to. For the people of El Dorado, such a cup was about as valuable as one carved out of wood, or baked from clay, or a handful of colored beads threaded on a narrow strip of leather.

Here, the weight of gold was valued at about thirty thousand yen per troy ounce, in this time, and the cup was a bit heavier than the average coffee cup. Approximately fifteen troy ounces, slightly over a pound.

By gold weight alone, that was an estimated four hundred and fifty thousand yen.

With a good story about how he was selling one of his grandfather's knick-knacks left to him in the will so that he could build a good computer, and no he didn't know where it originally came from, Jaguar got almost that much money in exchange. Four hundred thousand yen. Mostly because the artwork and good condition of the cup meant that the pawnbroker could probably add at least another zero to that selling it to a collector somewhere, and felt no shame about tricking some idiot kid into thinking he'd gotten a good deal when he was actually being ripped off.

That was fine. It was why Jaguar had picked a pawnbroker like this to begin with. Not too scummy, to the point where he would call yakuza to come pick Jaguar's pockets after he left, but if he had gone to a pawnbroker with a code of ethics then they would have refused to make a purchase until the mystery kid brought his parents in to oversee the exchange. And it would have been much harder to find such a business anyway, so there was no point in going through the extra effort just to inconvenience himself.

With that, Jaguar was in a position to actually buy a few sets of new, modern clothes and then toss the ones that he had borrowed back over a fence so it looked like they had just fallen off the line and blown away.

And from there, with the foundation set up and enough cash in hand that he wouldn't need to concern himself about buying mall food court items while he thought, Jaguar began plotting.

There were two options to work with, essentially. The good guys or the bad ones. Ultimately, that distinction more or less boiled down to whether they were willing to kill, and while there was some degree of moving from one side of that dividing line to the other... for the most part, the individuals in question stuck to their ideals and their methods. Katsujinken or Satsujinken.

Which meant that Jaguar had to pick wisely before going into things, and plan around having easier access to individuals on one side of things or the other. Which of them would be more useful, in the long term, than the others.

FIghting humanlike monsters in places like Orario might be one thing, but sometimes sparing an opponents life meant that they would come at you again with a better idea of how to defeat you. When they fought to kill, and you did not... that meant that you had to win every time, while they only had to win once and then they had won forever. It was a set of ideals that meant you had to become strong.

Killing your enemies simplified things. But it could also lead to its own problems, if Jaguar was traveling with a known killer in some worlds. Any super-heroic world, for example... villain label right of the bat. That woould cause issues if Jaguar tried to approach heroes. But the same could be said in reverse, and the religion that Jaguar was hijacking for power was all about human sacrifice. Most places, he would be considered a villain by default if that got out.

So then.

On the good guy side of things. The Ryozanpaku Dojo, home of the strongest man in the world and the other masters... of most interest, the weapons mistress Shigure. It's probably the best place for actual training, considering they manage to turn an average high schooler effectively superhuman by virtue of not allowing him the mercy of death to escape from the grueling training. Jaguar could benefit from that, as long as he didn't let on that he would be willing to kill his enemies.

The Shinpaku Alliance... didn't really teach, by comparison, but had some interesting people. Renka Ma, daughter of one of the Ryozanpaku masters, Kensei. Shiratori and Number 20, right hand henchwomen. The Valkyries.

... Jaguar might steal some of their personell, but it wasn't worth joining them, once they properly came to exist.

On the bad-guy side of things, the Eight Fists of Ragnarok, with Freya and Valkyrie. Yomi, with Raichi, Rachel Stanley the wrestler, Rimi Kokorone, and cutest of all, Chikage Kushinada. And then there was Yami, with Mikumo Kushinada, Isshinsai Ogata, Mad Sword Izayoi, Mildred Lawrence, Raki Houshinano, and Marmaduke Brown.

Of those interesting persons, only Ogata was a man. He wasn't even someone that Jaguar found particularly attractive, but as a potential teacher and bodyguard? He was high up there, if he could be convinced.

There were a few other miscellaneous characters doing their own thing without affiliations, as well. Sakaki's unnamed older sister and Jennifer Grey, the gunwoman, stood out among them...

... Honestly, Jaguar concluded, he might want to consider picking up a gun at some point. But frankly, if he had one then it would discourage him from learning other things, since guns were simple. Just keep buying bullets and pulling the trigger. Except for when you were fighting things that could shrug the bullets off, or when you were fighting on a level better than bullets, that was.

So then.

If he was going to get Kenichi-level training, then Ryozanpaku was a safer bet. But the people from the bad faction seemed more interesting and useful, given that Jaguar was often going to be in situations where other people had to die. Not everywhere ran on the modern idea of 'killing your enemies is wrong', after all.

... And in the end, it came down to Ogata. Because Ogata had been a disciple of Ryozanpaku once before, and while not everyone had picked up on his true nature immediately... he had soured the waters. They would be looking for indications of Jaguar's intentions, even if he brought them money. If they picked up on them? They wouldn't put their all into training Jaguar, the way they would Kenichi.

So it was the bad guys, then. That was fine. Either way, Jaguar had a lot of golden assets to smooth an introduction and request to hire someone for training.

Jaguar dipped his fries into a bit of ketchup crunched them down as he thought.