Disclaimer – I don't own Tekken.
Warning – Spoilers for Steve's TT2 ending.
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Paternity
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Paul.
The woman who approaches him is pretty. Well, that is the first thing he notices, before the bright white of her lab coat, and the clipboard held up in earnest. She smiles, sweet as spring skies, and he would have been tempted save the "Mrs." on her nametag.
"This is just a medical procedure, Mr. Phoenix," She hands him a cup. A blush tinting her cheeks. Damn, why did she have to be pretty? "If you would be so kind as to go to the bathroom, and do what is permitted."
He grins. It's weird that Law or any of the other guys have not been asked to do this, but there is a pay bill attached and Paul is all too happy to take it all. Anyway, it's only for medical purposes. Health checks are commonplace for tournaments.
He winks at the woman as he slips through the sliding doors. He certainly knows who he'll be thinking of.
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Nina.
She's failed for the last time.
Kazuya Mishima has been consumed in fiery tongues of flame; her target lost, her mission forfeit. She is being wrapped in blankets of ice water, her body dragging down, her lungs dampening with frost.
The freezing throes of her penance.
Somehow, in the cold locked within her, there is a coil of warmth that sleeps in her lower abdomen. She's barely aware of it, can barely touch it with her consciousness, as far and as fleeting as a forgotten dream. Her body expands, alters, inflates and deflates, and then the warmth is gone and the cold closes in once more.
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NT01.
The walls are white here. They creep up into a white heaven and melt into a white hell. When he presses his bare foot on the ground, it's as cold and brisk as snow.
The subject's rooms are stark, impossibly clean, brutal in their banality. Their beds are iron wrought, the pillows stiff with disinfectant and the polyester sheets are rough on his body. They call them each, one by one, their numbers read out in distant monotone.
Steve's name is low on the list.
One of the children, a girl with red hair and frayed pajamas, was on the list before him. She'd reappeared, a little pale, but rubbing her arm and pouting.
A week later, the skin on her face begins to loosen. At first, the other children think it's an irritation. She rubs it and moans each night. But then it begins to pucker up in furious, fleshy mounds and her sniffles become screams. They take her away a day after. She has to wear a mask to cover it, but then her screams are silent and then they don't see her at all.
When his number is called, he tries to hide.
They come and find him anyway.
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Paul.
Paul sips his beer in the corner of the dojo. Marshall is barking at the kid now, frustrated by the boy's slow progress. The kid looks like he wants to curl into himself and Paul crunches the beer can in his left hand.
Marshall's baby boy is a tiny hurricane of clumsy kicks and poorly developed punches. He's an odd little thing, quiet, shy, sharing none of Marshall's temper. Paul doesn't get any of Marshall's rhetoric about stinging like a beer or that other spirit crap, but if Marshall can lash out fire then Forest, he reckons, is the smooth running of a mountain stream.
After the training, Paul scratches the inside of his ear and winks as a flushing Marshall storms into the kitchen. Left behind is the skinny student shrinking inside his tracksuit. Paul gets to his feet, suddenly stern, and beckons to the kid.
A week later, Marshall has another revisal of the kid's technique. Now each punch is becoming surer of itself, each kick more of an elastic snap. Marshall nods, his lips twitching upwards, and before he goes to cook dinner, he pats Forest's head.
Forest turns to peer anxiously at the man sat in the corner.
Over the top of his beer, Paul grins and gives him a thumbs up.
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Nina.
She wonders, sometimes, if the vacuum inside her mind had remained, whether she would have had a different life. But memories, little fragments of heat and bullet and blood, now have slotted themselves back in their rightful places and she can't return to the blank eyed doll she was before.
Her newest target is a young man. Golden haired, golden handed; a champion boxer. Usually a target is just another red, blinking dot on her rifle, but she takes the time to research this one because something about him uncharacteristically fascinates her.
Connections run through the blue sheen of the computer screen, through time and ice water and blood. The connection they share eats into her head. In disgust, she switches off her laptop, and waits by the window. The rifle is heavy, cold, even under the protection of her leather gloves.
When he appears, her focus wanes from the fatal area between his back and shoulder, and onto the blonde glare of his hair. She recognizes the shade, because it is her own. And there, she feels the heat, creeping up in her belly like a flaming ghost, warmth that once punctured the ice water around her and now seems to blister her very blood.
Suddenly weary, she pulls the gun back, and rests her burning temples against its barrel.
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NTO1.
The walls are white here.
He wonders if the white absorbs all of this. Takes each cry and murmur and painful needle prick and glosses over it in slabs of blinding nothing, thus making it all nothing and they, him, all the others, nothing but numbers and small standing towers of flesh in grey cloth.
The woman who pities him has kind eyes. But the coat she wears is as crisp and as even as freshly driven snow, and her hand always leaves his too quickly.
When he cries, when he even finds it in himself to scream his name, the sound melts into the white wall and remains locked, tight, reaching no one's ears but hers.
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Father.
The kid's good. Spookily good.
He could certainly see what Marsh was going on about. The talented Steve Fox is a brilliant addition to their money making scheme. He keeps telling himself that's the reason he lingers in the dojo, even after Marshall has packed up, watching the man doing his warming down exercises.
There's something in the blunt, explosive power of his cutting left hook. Something in the weight of his brow. The way he shifts the muscles in his shoulders just so. The rare glint of cockiness in the intense blue shock of his eyes.
"What's the matter, pops? Takin' a fancy to me, have you?"
The nickname rattles something In Paul's bones. He scoffs, yanking his biking jacket over his gi.
"Don't get too bold, kid."
"You're not bad for an old timer," Steve smirks. Even with that flaring spirit, he still retains an outer cool Paul never achieved at that age. "But you can rely on me to get that money for you. Don't want you putting out your back or anything."
"Mouthy little punk."
When Steve finally finishes, they venture out into the mild bluster of the autumn night. Paul dusts the leaves off his bike as Steve shoves his hands in his pockets and looks out into the bare, black slip of road.
There's a silence. Paul usually can't tolerate such things, but there is gravity in his limbs he can't shake off. When he speaks, his voice is gravelly, tired, to his ears.
"Yo, kid." He starts up the engine as an invitation. "Come with me to Marsh's. He'll fix us somethin' good."
Steve eyes the bike.
"Is that thing safe?'
"Don't worry, kid." Paul's gloved fingers tighten around the handles. "I'll look after ya."
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Mother.
She comes across his name, merely by accident, by assessing some of the old science files on the Zaibatsu's database. It isn't actually his name, but a sequence of letters and numbers. A clinical tag. Not a name.
The research she is conducting is under the order of her employer. Any diversion is inexcusable. But her fingers freeze over the keyboard, and her mouth forms the word.
NT01.
There is a photo. A round faced child in a white slip. His arm is hidden behind his back. Behind him, her hands on his shoulders, is a fresh faced woman in a lab coat. Nina glares into her warm eyes with the cold shock of her own, and diverts her attention to the boy's records.
Experiments. A death toll. A synthetic being capable of withstanding the effects of the devil gene.
NT01. According to his supervisor, dead by the age of six.
There is a name attached to the project. The grim countenance of an aging man glowers from within the confines of an old photograph.
She taps the blood red edge of her nail on the mouse.
They possibly never saw his face, the face hidden by lab mask or goggles or the shadow of a blizzard white cap. The subjects, NT01, her son, would never know the face of their captor.
Unfortunately for him, she has a head for faces.
This captor, so to speak, is now their head scientist.
Jin Kazama has been silently monitoring her progress. That evening, she is summoned to his office. They have dinner. The food and setting is modest. Jin never cared for ornate occasion.
Over wine, he gives her new orders.
That next morning, she pulls together a few grunts and heads towards the genetic testing bases stationed on the borders. It's a routine overview, nothing special. She allows her second in command to alert this to the nervous, gibbering masses of white coated monsters, and she breezes through the barren corridors until they finally come to their target.
The doctor is older now, more bent and grey. He shuffles around the office, sipping countless glasses of filtered water. He smiles as they enter. Upon seeing Nina, he stiffens; she merely stares back at him with her child's eyes.
The leading grunt takes the reports they need. The overhead light in the dim, dingy theatre is a cooling, artic blue. As the second in command engages in short, professional conversation, Nina steps into the ring of light. She looks up at the circle of bulbs, joined together in the medical lamp, and then down to the hard overlay of the operating table.
She pauses by the nearest glass of water. The doctor is becoming agitated. He nods, barking that everything is in order, and that this institution is of the highest importance, and that of course, they need to continue and anymore hindrances is a threat to their research.
"That's enough." She says smoothly. She turns on her heel and heads toward the door. "We're done here."
In relief, the doctor takes another swig of his drink.
Nina hears him begin to splutter, to gag and retch, as she is halfway down the hall. A fine powder is as effective as a bullet. In fact, with the right amount and sort, it can be much, much more painful.
A day later, she finds Jin assembling troops in the snow of the Japanese wilderness. The splay of his trench coat is a black blur amongst the soft, spitting flakes. Their eyes meet and she nods. The mission is a success.
The sun finds its way through the snow.
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Steve.
The walls aren't white.
In a patriotic flush, he'd themed them red, white and blue, and now looking at the mishmash of colours, he's grinned. It's a colourful mess, but he's too lazy to repaint it all now. Some people like their dojos as plain as mud, but not him. Atmosphere is important.
He catches sight of himself in the mirror. Smirking, he tugs away at his hair, fighting the urge to flex a bit of muscle, Hwoarang style, before a too familiar ache clamors up his arm.
The scar tissue unravels like thin streaks of vapor trails. He ghosts it with the end of his fingertips. The skin is raised, pricked up, and he feels the rugged hide of it beneath his nails.
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Son.
The woman in the window lowers her gun and walks away.
The man on the bike offers him a road home.
And the child in the white walls no longer cries.