Black Armor Shines Too
The crystal shards of stars caught the light of the full, bright moon. Waves of light teased the tips of white budding flowers. The fluffy white heads swayed in the wind across the curving hills. Jin was wandering along, trailing a hand along the stalks of the flowers. Bathed in the shadow of the castle ruin, his dark coat and black gloves stood in stark contrast to the gentle white.
Looming above him, the ruins stood tall and strong. How long had they been there? What legacy had crumbled with those stately stone walls?
He frankly didn't care. This was just a place. A place where the breeze blew, the moon shone, and he could linger in a moment of utterly perfect solitude.
The corner of his eye caught motion in the ruin. He tried to discount it, wishing it away to some bug or frog. He knew nothing so small and trivial could have ever caught his attention though. Not to mention the uncanny sensation that someone was watching him from deep in the dark solace.
Gently rolling his steps, hiding the sounds of the soles of his feet in the grass, Jin approached the ruin. Weaving through the flora, his eyes searching the darkness, he caught a flash of movement as a wash of bright color leapt into vision.
A lime green shirt, electric blue pants and two tightly fastened pigtails greeted him.
"En garde!" Xiaoyu cried.
Jin blinked. "Are you serious?" He searched her face, which was set in the most peculiar expression.
"Draw your weapon, knight, and fight!" she crowed. It took a moment, but the flower she had taken from the ground bobbed in the air, stalk in hand and the fluffy head waving in the air.
"You've got to be kidding me," Jin muttered.
Xiaoyu parried, and the seeds exploded against Jin's waist. He jumped in surprise, looking at the little white puff balls which were stuck against his coat, and then looking back at Xiaoyu incredulously. "Oh no you didn't," he said. Sweeping up a stalk in hand, he looked at Xiaoyu. After a pause, he asked "Uh, now what?"
Xiaoyu rolled her eyes, cocking her hip to the side. "You defeat the black knight, duh," she said, picking up a fresh flower head and tossing aside her bare stalk.
"Wait, you're the black knight?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, I'm obviously not Prince Charming," she said, taking her fighting stance again.
"Yeah, right. I'll be the black knight, thanks," he said, imitating her stance hesitantly.
"HEY!" Xiaoyu stopped, putting her hands on her hips. "What's that supposed to mean?"
POOF! The head of Jin's "sword" burst into fluffs against her shoulder, and she let out a small shriek, dropping her sword. Jin laughed, a small sort of laugh that hid in the back of his throat while he half smiled at his odd opponent.
"You're kidding. You're made of sugar and spice and everything nice, or some crap like that. Can't you be Princess Cottontail or something?" he chided.
"Oh, you'll pay for that one!" Dropping her sword, Xiaoyu ran towards Jin. Sidestepping in the cloud of white seeds, Jin managed to escape with only a few punches on the shoulder.
"What's so bad about being a Princess, I thought girls liked that stuff?" Jin's tone, though condescending, was friendly. Xiaoyu, who was standing next to him and plucking a seed from her hair, looked up at him with large, doe eyes.
"Well, what if no one comes to save me? That would kinda suck, wouldn't it?"
Jin paused. He honestly hadn't thought about that before. Whipping up another sword, Jin twirled it in his fingers as he examined it. "I guess so long as there's one knight in shining armor, there isn't anything to worry about, is there?" Feeling a poof in the small of his black, Jin whirled around as Xiaoyu nimbly sprung away. "Hey, that was a cheap shot!" he complained.
"Still think I'm all sugar and spice?" Her eyebrow raised, her hand on her hip as she looked challengingly at him; he was beginning to wonder just what this crazy woman really was made out of.
"Whatever the hell you are, you're pretty weird, that's all I'm sure of!" he replied.
That clearly wasn't the best thing to say to a woman, because she dropped her mouth for a moment before charging him. This time he didn't sidestep, and he was taken right down to the ground. Surprised, he tried to disentangle himself from the scramble, and when he finally did he found himself staring into the moon, back on the ground with what looked like star dust falling. No, that was just more fluffy white seeds. Maybe some of Xiaoyu's insanity had rubbed off on him.
Speaking of, Xiaoyu was sitting beside him, bouncing one of the stalks and watching the tip swing back and forth against the dark backdrop of the sky. Giggling proudly, she dangled it in his face. "Call me weird, would you…" she said.
"Pardon my political incorrectness, I believe 'clinically insane' is the proper term," he replied. Trying to catch his cool, he curved his arms around his head and crossed his ankles. A good bask ought to keep her from noticing just how off-guard he had been caught.
The smile she dropped down to him was absolutely dazzling. Tucking her feet underneath her, she plucked at one of the flowers idly. "You call me insane, but I think you're the real weirdo here… I mean, who wants to play the black knight?"
"Obviously you did," he said in his defense.
"Nah, it was just a good excuse to attack you."
"That's comforting. You're really convincing me that you're mentally sound, you know that?" He shifted and settled. Another one of the things he loved so much about this place was how soft the ground seemed to feel. Even when he was thrown to it by a psycho Chinese girl, it seemed to absorb all of the shock and turn it into comfort. She gently set her arm on the ground and looked at him imploringly; she was obviously expecting a better answer. "Come on, I'm the original black knight… I always have been."
She smiled. Trying to straighten out her pigtails, she realized that they were a hopeless mess and she slid the fasteners out of her hair. The dark sheet fell over her shoulders. "Well, aren't you uplifting…"
Jin would have replied. He had even planned out his witty response. It was sucked right out of his brain, however, and replaced with a thought. Was this really Xiaoyu? Who was this woman leaning over him? She had all the eccentric charm of the girl who had lived in his house all those years, of that bouncy freshman at his high school, of that contender in the Tournament who decorated her attack Panda in large pink bows. All those years in the house, she had been the diamond in the rough, the one thing in the Mishima home that wasn't quite so bad.
That was a gross understatement, and Jin knew it, but now was not the time to resurface old crushes. He didn't deserve her anymore now than he did back then.
"I guess it's true, all the same," Xiaoyu suddenly said. "You've always been so 'black' and 'mysterious,' lurking in the shadows like you were one of them instead of one of us humans."
"So sue me, I'm not cut out to be a knight in shining armor," he muttered, looking away from her.
Gently setting her hand on the ground and leaning over him, she leaned forward and whispered "Black armor shines too."
Jin sat up, Xiaoyu moving fluidly with him to leave that small bubble of space between them empty. It was filled only with anticipation. He would never want to admit it, those stupid romantic things he started noticing. She was so absolutely beautiful, such a bright beacon of color in the weaving field of blue, black and white. Her hue, her smile, the way some secret light was caught in her eyes, and the way her hair framed her face…
He rested his hand on the place where her shoulder met her neck. Her arm curled around his neck, her smile softening beautifully as the space between them slowly disappeared.
"How quaint," a deep voice said.
Jin and Xiaoyu each jumped. How hadn't he heard someone approaching? And there, sure enough, stood Kazuya. A dark, sinister form between them and the moonlight. "Reliving your childhood, are we Jin? With cops and robbers, and having your way with girls in the grass?"
Xiaoyu turned brilliant red, hiding behind her hair and shrinking back. Jin slowly rose to his feet, and walked into the shadow of the castle where his Kazuya stood. It took a while for him to get there, and his eyes meeting his father's. They stood at the same height, their hair sloping in the same way. Kazuya's coat tails dangled lifelessly behind him, as they each sized each other up.
"Is there something you want." Jin's voice was intense as he kept Kazuya's gaze.
Kazuya's red eye scrutinized Jin with fiery intensity. "I just thought I'd provide some fatherly advice," Kazuya said smoothly. "My greatest mistake came from a woman."
The hate that wafted through the air was uninterrupted. It rolled across the hills, and some small creature probably curled up and died from the intensity of the vibe. Xiaoyu wasn't entirely sure what to do. On the ground, watching the two stand for what felt like an eternity, she didn't know if she should stand, speak, or try and lighten the mood. Finally, Kazuya broke the gaze, taking a few steps back and walking away, over the crest of the hill, silhouetted against the moonlight.
Jin's eyes didn't leave him. Even when Xiaoyu stood up, she knew she wouldn't divert Jin's attention until the senior Mishima had disappeared into the horizon, swallowed up by the velvety blue of the sky.
Jin turned around, his dark hair and suit illuminated by the moon and the swaying flowers. He was in the shadow of the large, ruined castle, just outside of the light of the moon. He smiled just slightly, and the way he cocked his head seemed to say come join me.
Xiaoyu did just that. The tall stalks with their fluffy white heads burst into small clouds of fluffy seeds as she passed, many of them sticking to the cloth of her pants.
The last little bit she ran, feeling the cool air on her arms. When she finally reached Jin, all she could think to say was "Hi…"
Jin smiled a little broader and responded in kind.
There was a moment of silence between the two, Jin engulfed in shadow and Xiaoyu glowing in the moonlight. Each watched the other, anticipating their first move. Finally, taking the initiative Xiaoyu said, "I love this place. It reminds me of a scene from a movie." She turned to face him, smiled, and said "You know, like… princess gets spirited away to yon castle and daring prince needs to save her. You know, one of those kinds of movies! And the knight in shining armor would come up—" she smiled sheepishly, kicking at the dirt. "That's where I got the idea."
"It's a beautiful place," Jin said. His eyes slipped over the side of the castle, and Xiaoyu joined him in the shadow. His profile, sharp and defined, stood out in against his black backdrop.
"Why did you come here?" she asked. Walking over to the castle wall, she leaned against its protective stone, waiting for his response.
A smile flickered on Jin's face. He wandered a few steps closer, seeming to look around and pluck his answer from the sky, the field and the shadow they stood in. "I suppose… it's a nice place to get away."
"From him?" She gestured over toward the hill where Kazuya had left.
Jin laughed shortly. "Partly. I have a lot of other things to escape from which seem to follow me… I suppose life is just like that, though…"
He didn't have to list things out neatly for her. She remembered him. If there was anything in the world that Jin hated more than his father, it just might have been himself. He was always restlessly wandering the halls of the Mishima mansion, trailing about as if to finish his unfinished business, never letting himself rest. "You know, if you stop punishing yourself, you might find you don't have anything worth punishing."
Jin looked up. His dark eyes, infinitely deep, caught hers. "You remind me of someone…" he said finally.
"It had better be someone good." Xiaoyu folded her hands behind her back.
"My mother."Words flew away from Xiaoyu. She pictured Jun—she had only seen her once—with the black hair, clothed in white. She was so beautiful. When Xiaoyu first met her, all she could think of was how much she wanted to be like her: beautiful, good and wise. "I… wow, now she was an incredibly good person…" Xiaoyu murmured.
Jin's smile widened, a touch of reminiscent sadness at the corners of his mouth. "Yes… she really was…" Jin took a step forward, and paused. He seemed to be simultaneously pushing forward and pulling back, drawn towards something he was resisting. Xiaoyu suddenly felt shy. With another step, he was brought right up to her. The space between them was disappearing, replaced with a warm desire. "I… well…" Jin paused, looking down with an embarrassed laugh, swallowing his words. "You are too."
"Yeah, I think you got that from her side too," Xiaoyu whispered.
There was scarce a moment where her lips stopped moving before they were met by his. So simple a gesture, his lips meeting hers, but it meant so much. This boy who had teased her dreams for years was now a man—with his hand curled around her waist, pulling her closer, just as strong as she imagined him.
So this is what it felt like to be sent to the moon.