"You arrogant piece of trash!" Gaston roared, his face transitioning from a bruised purple to a deep, vein-popping crimson.
He didn't just throw a punch; he lunged with the full weight of his hunting-trained body, his thick arms outstretched. He intended to seize Huang Wen by the waist, hoist him over his head like a trophy buck, and slam him into the cobblestones to shatter his spine and his dignity in one go. To Gaston, might was right, and he had never met a man he couldn't physically dominate.
The result, however, was a bit different from his mental rehearsal.
To the few villagers watching from their windows, it looked like Gaston had simply tripped over his own momentum. But to Belle, who was standing right there, it was a blur of movement. One second Gaston was a charging bull; the next, he was airborne. Huang Wen hadn't even taken his hands out of his pockets until the last possible microsecond.
With a move that looked more like a graceful dance step than a street fight, Huang Wen caught Gaston's momentum, pivoted, and helped the big man find the floor with terminal velocity.
CRACK.
The sound of Gaston hitting the dirt was wet and heavy. He lay there for a moment, the wind knocked out of him, staring up at the clear blue sky with a look of utter, soul-crushing confusion.
"This... this isn't right. I'm Gaston..." he wheezed, his fingers clawing at the mud. "I can lift a full-grown ox. I can bench press two hundred pounds with one arm. How... how am I on the ground?"
"Gravity is a harsh mistress, isn't she?" Huang Wen remarked, finally pulling his hands out and dusting them off. He didn't even look winded.
"Oh my god," Belle whispered, her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide, darting between the fallen 'hero' and the calm stranger. "I've seen Gaston throw blacksmiths across the tavern... and you didn't even break a sweat. How did you do that? Was that... magic?"
Gaston scrambled to his feet, his dignity in tatters. He didn't charge again—he wasn't that stupid. He saw the look in Huang Wen's eyes; it wasn't the look of a lucky fighter, but the look of a predator watching an insect.
"You're a freak! A circus performer!" Gaston spat, backstepping rapidly. "You'll pay for this, stranger! You think you can come into my village and humiliate me? This isn't over! Not by a long shot!"
He turned tail and ran toward the center of the village, his retreat looking more like a panicked flight than a tactical withdrawal.
Huang Wen watched him go for a second before turning back to Belle. He offered her a charming, lopsided grin. "Well, that was a lively welcome. Any chance I can get that invitation to come inside now? I think I've had enough of the local 'hospitality' for one morning."
"Oh! Yes, of course! Please, come in!" Belle snapped out of her daze, clutching her father's pinwheel to her chest. She quickly led him through the small garden gate and into the cozy, cluttered cottage. "I'm so sorry about him. He thinks he owns everything with a pulse in this town. Let me... let me get you some water. Or tea? You must be exhausted."
"Water is fine, thank you," Huang Wen said, making himself at home on a sturdy wooden chair.
As Belle turned toward the hearth to fetch a pitcher, Huang Wen's expression immediately went flat. He reached up and tapped the bezel of his high-tech watch.
"Silly Girl, give me a status report," he muttered under his breath. "Where exactly are we in France? This place looks like a 1700s theme park, but the air... the air feels wrong."
For a long moment, the watch remained silent, the LED lights flickering in a frantic pattern. Finally, the voice of the AI girl whispered into his ear via bone conduction.
"Boss, we have a problem. Silly Girl has been running a deep-layer scan of the surrounding environmental variables. The results are... anomalous."
"Define anomalous," Huang Wen thought.
"The fluctuation you detected in the forest earlier? It wasn't just a spatial rift. It was a temporal lock. This entire region is suspended in a localized time loop, or rather, a 'Time-Space Pocket.' Because you lack specific temporal sensing abilities, you only felt the spatial shift. But the reality is that the coordinates of this village overlap perfectly with the modern world you were just in."
"Overlap? You mean like a folded piece of paper?"
"Exactly. It's a spacetime bound by high-level magic. This village and the surrounding woods are technically 'nowhere' and 'everywhere.' You didn't just walk into a different part of France; you stepped into a magical bubble that exists parallel to the Marvel world. That's why the technology is backward—time doesn't move forward here in the same way."
Huang Wen frowned. A thought hit him. Did the Ancient One set me up? He quickly shook it off. No, the Sorcerer Supreme was many things, but she wasn't a prankster. If she wanted him in a cage, she'd use the Mirror Dimension, not a musical fairytale village. This felt more like a cosmic accident—or a destination the system wanted him to find.
"Here you go," Belle said, returning with a ceramic mug. She sat across from him, her curiosity finally boiling over. "I realized I haven't even asked properly—who are you? My father doesn't usually make friends with men who can toss hunters around like ragdolls. And he certainly doesn't give his most precious inventions to strangers."
"My name is Huang Wen," he replied, taking a sip of the surprisingly cold water. "I'm a traveler. I was passing through the woods when I ran into Maurice. We... had a bit of an adventure with some local wildlife, and he was kind enough to invite me over."
He chose to leave out the part where he punched a wolf's head into a different zip code. No need to scare the girl.
"A traveler?" Belle's eyes lit up like a child's on Christmas morning. Her posture shifted, leaning in close. "You mean you've seen things outside of Villeneuve? Beyond the mountains? I've lived here my whole life, and the only 'traveling' I do is through the pages of the books I borrow from the priest."
"I've seen a few places," Huang Wen said, enjoying the spark of life in her eyes. "I haven't spent much time in this part of Europe yet, but I've been to the Amazon in South America, the frozen wastes of Antarctica, the deserts of Australia, and most of Asia."
"Antarctica?" Belle gasped, the word sounding like a prayer. "The place at the bottom of the world? Is it true? Is it nothing but mountains of glass and snow? And the birds... the ones that walk like men?"
Huang Wen couldn't help but laugh. "You mean penguins. Yeah, they're real. Although 'walking like men' is a bit generous. They're more like... clumsily cute. They'll be waddling along, looking all serious in their little tuxedo feathers, and then—splat—they trip over a pebble. Or they'll spend an hour catching a fish only to have it slide right back out of their mouths because they forgot to swallow."
"'Clumsily cute'!" Belle laughed, a genuine, bell-like sound that filled the small room. "What a wonderful way to describe them. I can almost see it. Oh, I would give anything to see a world where birds wear tuxedos and trip over pebbles."
While the two of them shared stories in the warmth of the cottage, the rest of the world was getting significantly darker.
Back in the deep, enchanted forest, the sun had barely crested the horizon, but for Maurice, it felt like midnight again. He had ridden Philip back to the edge of the castle grounds, his heart hammering against his ribs. He just needed one rose. One single rose for his Belle.
He found the garden, the petals glistening with a frost that looked like diamonds. He reached out, his hand trembling, and snapped a single stem.
ROAR!
The ground shook. A shadow, massive and terrifying, erupted from the balcony above. Before Maurice could even scream, a pair of furred, clawed hands seized him, hoisting him into the air with effortless strength.
"A thief!" a guttural, beastly voice growled. "You come into my home, and you steal the only beautiful thing left?"
Maurice was hauled away toward the high towers, his pleas for mercy falling on deaf ears. Philip, sensing the predator, didn't wait around. The horse bolted, his hooves thundering back toward the village.
Meanwhile, at the local tavern—a place filled with the smell of stale ale and unwashed hunters—Gaston was nursing a bruised ego and a bruised backside. He slammed a tankard onto the table, the wood splintering under his grip.
"He cheated! I'm telling you, LeFou, the man is a sorcerer or a demon!" Gaston spat, his eyes bloodshot.
LeFou, his diminutive and overly-loyal sycophant, scurried over, rubbing Gaston's shoulders. "Of course he cheated, Gaston! No human man could put you on the ground. It's impossible! You're the pinnacle of masculinity! You eat five dozen eggs! You have antlers in all of your decorating!"
"He made me look like a fool in front of Belle," Gaston hissed. "I saw her face. She was laughing at me. At me!"
"This is a disaster," LeFou whispered, his eyes darting around the tavern. "If the village finds out you were beaten by a man who looks like he's never even seen a hunting rifle, your reputation is toast. You won't be the leader anymore. You'll just be... that guy who got sat down by a tourist."
Gaston's grip tightened on the tankard until it shattered. "That cannot happen."
"I have an idea," LeFou leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. "No matter how fast he is, he isn't faster than lead. We don't need a fair fight, Gaston. We just need to wait for the sun to go down. A musket ball from the shadows... and your problem disappears."
Gaston's eyes widened, then a slow, cruel smirk spread across his face. "A musket. Yes. Even a demon can't survive a hole in the head."
"And think about it," LeFou added, his grin turning wicked. "Old Maurice is still out there. He's crazy, always talking about 'moving carriages' and 'beasts.' If something... unfortunate... happens to him too, Belle will be all alone. She'll have no choice but to crawl to the strongest man left in the village."
Gaston took a long breath, the darkness in his heart finally overriding any lingering sense of honor. "Tonight then. We settle the score with the stranger... and I finally get my prize."