Finally, Jun Kazama had a name she could work with.
The incident at the Divinity Gentleman's Club was regarded as an unsolvable mystery. Lee Chaolan was released from custody only a couple of hours after he was taken to the nearest police station for questioning. Everyone in the club with the exception of Lee, the traveling Miguel Caballero Rojo, and two of the cooks had perished quietly and unexpectedly with thin holes in all of the victims' necks indicating a stab wound with a needle of some kind. The authorities thus far had been unable to figure out what could kill them so silently and so stealthily.
The answer, of course, is that the assassins were not human, Jun thought while she read the article in the newspaper. However, it is very fortunate that Lee was able to put aside his primal urges and maintain a cool head: he was able to give me something very important.
The very important thing in question was the name "Nagalya." While only a first name might not have seemed like much of a clue, such a title was relatively uncommon and Jun also had an accurate facial description of the Wisp leader to work with. As soon as Jun heard Lee's story once he came back from the gentleman's club, she immediately called Heihachi and requested his aid in discovering more about the woman with the new information made apparent.
"Hmph," Heihachi said with a scoff over the phone. "I suppose I can give you at least that much aid. It is at least comforting to know that you have not been slacking off between tournaments."
Jun had not yet received a call from Heihachi, but her cell phone was at the ready and with her at all times. While most of her fellow King of Iron Fist Tournament competitors felt that trusting Heihachi was the most naïve thing a person could do with his history of deceit, Jun recalled how Heihachi had aided her in the past three months and that was enough to put him in her immediate circle of allies. He will follow through, if he is able to find anything, she reassured herself when she left the house that morning. In the meantime, I will continue my own investigation.
Putting down her newspaper and looking down the balcony to see the sea of people, Jun picked up her cup of tea and gently sipped it. With the mystery of the woman now in someone else's hands, Jun had spent the day at the largest mall in Tokyo where over fifteen different jewelers resided. Surely at least one of them would be able to identity the blue metal that she carried with her at all times in case of a Wisp attack.
It was only 10:30 AM, and Jun had already visited three of the jewelers in question. "It's very beautiful," they had told her, almost as if they had rehearsed the line in advance, "but we don't have any kind of precious metal like that in our database. If you like, we could compare it to our other fine jewelry and maybe we can find something that would go along well with it."
While she gave the jewelers credit for not losing sight of their goal to sell her something in the wake of an unknown metal, Jun was not looking to enhance her elegance with the blue shard: she was looking to find more of its kind as well as the properties of it that made it so poisonous to the Wisps. Once she found that out, it wouldn't be too hard to have the Zaibatsu Heavy Industries to manufacture something similar to it and eradicate the specters on a wider scale.
It probably won't be that easy, Jun told herself while she opened up her purse and dropped some loose change on the table to act as her waiter's tip. I would be surprised if any of the jewelers knew anything about this shard: it gives off its own aura like it's a living thing, and even talks with whoever has in its possession…at least when it wants to.
There were now two incidents where the blue shards had psychically interacted with their owners, and both of them said the same thing: "Bring me to Lee Chaolan." There is obviously something special about Chaolan that I do not know about, but why is he so important? I was the one who was given the two shards: he was just the one I chose to share it with. She thought while she walked across the balcony and towards the next few line of stores. There's definitely something that the President of G-Corporation didn't tell me, and I'm not about to ask him about it like I'm his friend…
Jun put that thought on hold as she stopped in front of a large clothing store and looked around. Someone was following her, and it wasn't the President of G-Corporation. It's a new aura entirely, she muttered as she turned around and searched for anyone suspicious. Is it a new Wisp?
"It's been a while, Ms. Kazama."
To Jun's surprise, the voice came from above, causing her to look up and see a figure drop from the ceiling high above and softly landed a few feet away from her. The figure was a dark-skinned male, wearing a navy blue Kevlar vest with gold lining, and pants made of the same material and color. His arms were bare, leaving the kanji tattoos on his upper biceps for the world to see. Straightening his black shades, the man spoke in a cold and deep voice. "I hope that was not too flashy an entrance."
"Of course not," Jun replied with her usual calm and collected tone. "May I ask who I have the honor of speaking to? You seem to remember me, but I don't believe I have seen you before…"
"You can call me Raven: we crossed paths at the last tournament, but that was when your memory had not yet returned," the man said while he stood back up and folded his arms. "I work for an international spy agency, and they have had their attention on you for some time now."
"Is that so? For an international spy you do not seem particularly secretive," Jun commented on Raven's introduction with a raised eyebrow of amusement. "To what do I owe the pleasure of you revealing yourself to me?"
"My superiors would like to aid you in your ghost busting, Ms. Kazama," Raven answered. "The ever-important encounter you had with the leader of G-Corporation did not escape our attention, nor did your battle with the Pierrot Wisp at the park and the Fetishist Wisp at the transit station. Ms. Kazama, we are willing to give you the answers that you seek regarding the shards."
"That would make my trip today a little bit easier, but I would rather find the answers myself," Jun bowed her head and turned around. "As a former detective, it is a matter of pride. Now if you will excuse me, I have to search the mall for jewelers who can help me find the answers I seek. It was a pleasure meeting you, Raven-san."
However, Jun quickly twirled around and caught something that Raven had attempted to throw at her while she wasn't looking using her keen awareness and quick reflexes. Opening her palm and expecting to see a small weapon like a needle or dart, her eyes widened when she saw that it was another blue shard. They have been appearing a lot more often these past couple of days: why does Raven have one, as well?
"If you are wondering where I got that, it was given to me last night," Raven answered Jun's unspoken questions as he lowered his hand and returned his arms in their folded position. "The shard spoke to me, and told me to give it to Lee Chaolan just like it spoke to Paul Phoenix and Miguel Caballero Rojo."
"What do you know about Lee's involvement with the shards?" Jun suddenly asked, surprising Raven with her sudden interest in his involvement, though he didn't show it with any noticeable facial reaction. "I asked Lee to help me, and yet it seems the shards have been gravitating towards him."
"We are still investigating that, but we do have some idea as to what the shards are," Raven lifted his right hand and pointed to the shard he had just given the former detective. "All across history, there are legends of certain metals that were said to have magic properties: I'm sure you have heard of at least a couple of them."
"As a matter of fact, I have," Jun nodded her head before her eyes narrowed and her tone changed to a slightly harsher one. "However, I cannot base my investigation on legends even in this time of supernatural crisis. I am sure you can understand my unwillingness to assume that these shards are from a particular legend."
"I find that particularly difficult to believe, being that you were maimed and nearly killed by a creature that practically a myth prior to its sudden resurrection," Raven pointed out while he pushed up his shades. "Whatever the case, we have reason to believe that the shards are made from one of those magic metals. It is also possible that it was at one time a full weapon, like the Excalibur of Arthurian legend or the Sky Piercer of Chinese literature."
"…I suppose that is a possibility," Jun admitted while she looked down intently at the shard. "However, that still does not explain the sudden appearance of the Wisps, and why your organization seems to know more about this matter than I do."
"That is strictly confidential, Ms. Kazama: you would be wise not to look further into the matter."
"Then I will tell you this, Mr. Raven," Jun walked towards Raven until she was right in front of him, and then took off her sunglasses to let her brown eyes burn into the ninja's soul. "I want you to stay out of this: your information is much appreciated, but I will not have more people than necessary involved in this madness. It is bad enough that I have dragged Chaolan into the chaos, and I will certainly not have shady government organizations sniffing around and adding fuel to the fire."
"You are a bit…spunkier than I expected you to be," Raven finally said after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. "Unfortunately, I cannot acquiesce to your requests: just as you have your moral obligations to protect the innocent I have my own professional duties to do the same. I cannot carry out these duties when I am focusing on trivial matters such as your personal preference in handling things."
"Let me put this another way, Mr. Raven," Jun took a step back and put her sunglasses back on and raised her eyebrows to demonstrate the severity of her resolve. "If you impede on my investigation, I will use my connections within the Zaibatsu to track down your organization, go to its headquarters and personally have a word with your superiors. I have already experienced death, and I doubt anything less than that would scare me at this point."
"For someone who is supposedly a peaceful woman, you have quite a temper," Raven replied with a hint of amusement in his voice: a rare lapse in his otherwise stoic character. "However, I can see why you would find this personal. After all, it is only natural that a ghost should find herself occupied with other ghosts."
"I may have been a ghost in the tournament, but I have changed since then," Jun said before once again turning around and preparing to leave. "Goodbye, Mr. Raven: hopefully the next time we meet, it will be when the Wisps are gone."
"It is a shame that you are in such an unhelpful mood," Raven shook his head at Jun's lack of gratitude from the information he divulged to her. "I was sort of hoping you could prove your resolve with your fists, but I suppose you are Jun Kazama the advocate of unity and peace…"
As soon as Raven finished that last caustic comment, Jun paused and turned her head to the left slightly. "Did I touch a nerve, Ms. Kazama?" Raven asked before assuming his fighting stance. "Are you going to humor me after all?"
"There is a Wisp close by," Jun answered as she put her bags down and scanned her surroundings. "I can sense its ki, but it keeps bouncing around. I don't suppose you can sense things like that too, can you?"
"Of course I can: I am a ninja after all," Raven replied with almost a hint of hurt in his voice as he eased away from his fighting stance. After a few seconds of silence, the spy spoke up once again. "He keeps moving around quickly: it's possible that he has teleportation abilities."
"You sound as if such a thing is commonplace," Jun commented as she looked down the balcony to see people running around frantically in the midst of a few fallen bodies. "Are teleporters and the like recurring foes for the organization?"
"The technology for a feat like that isn't too unimaginable, thanks to the advances of G-Corporation and Mishima Heavy Industries." Raven pointed to his left, and then nodded towards Jun before pointing towards his right. "I will look this way: you can search that way."
Although Jun wasn't obliged to listen to Raven's orders, she did agree that splitting up might save more lives and so went on her way to search for the missing Wisp. I don't mean to be so hypocritical by accepting his help, but right now I could use the extra person, she thought as she slowly and carefully advanced through the emptying mall area. Still, I'm surprised at myself for being so vehemently against his organization's help to begin with. Maybe it really is my pride as a former WWWC officer setting in.
Hearing an anguished cry close by, Jun turned to her right to see a store clerk fall flat on her face onto a cash register with only a faint trail of blue smoke to show for it. That smoke is definitely from a Wisp: its ki signature is still lingering. Jun ran into the store against the stream of people coming out of it and checked the woman for a pulse. Already dead: I wonder what sort of power did this.
Another cry later, Jun turned back around to see the final person leaving the store fall to the ground clutching their chest. The former detective fell to her knees and kneeled over the fallen consumer, and watched as the last signs of life left his body and caused him to go limp. After closing his dead eyes with her fingers, Jun removed his hand from his chest and noticed a small wound. It looks like a bullet wound, but there is too little blood. Whoever I'm dealing with is branding some kind of firearm.
As she continued to ponder the mysterious assailant that was picking off innocent people, Jun felt a buzzing in her jacket pocket that shocked her out of her train of thought. Taking the phone out of the pocket and flipping it open, Jun greeted the caller with a polite hello.
"Hey, Jun," she heard a familiar voice call out to her. "I'd figure I would come here to this mall and help you find the right jeweler for the shards. Where are you right now?"
"I'm on the third floor on the east wing: there's a Wisp attacking innocent people," Jun answered Lee with cold realism as she stepped out of the store and went back out into the main area. "Keep your eyes open and your senses clean: it might be targeting them to get to us."
"You've got to be kidding me: it's the middle of the morning," Lee complained as Jun spotted another person fall down a few meters away from her. "This is the first time the Wisps have attacked in broad daylight."
"After that stunt last night, I wouldn't be surprised if that woman who leads them decided to become more brazen," Jun reasoned while her patience grew thin in the wake of people falling down dead from bullet wounds that came from an invisible shooter. "Call me back when you find something."
Folding her cellphone and putting it back in her pocket, Jun saw another person fall down as soon as she reached the last victim. Finally, it's leaving a trail of bodies for me to follow; Jun thanked her luck and ran past the next victim in hopes of catching sight of the mystery Wisp. Hopefully this will lead me somewhere.
To Jun's good fortune, it did happen to lead her somewhere: right into a thin beam of power that just missed her head and struck a mannequin in a store behind her. Turning to left, the brave woman found her quarry: a figure wearing a black trenchcoat and dark blue leather pants. His shirtless abdomen was adorned with a golden bandolier, and his face was masked with a red scarf and a pair of dark green goggles. My enemy uses a gun to strike down his victims, Jun throught angrily as the Rifleman arrogantly dusted off his toned blue abs and brushed back his purple hair tied back in a ponytail before aiming his bayonet-tipped rifle at Jun once again. How cowardly!
Using her extensive martial arts training to weave through the bolts of ki that were fired at her, Jun managed to get within inches of the Wisp before grabbing onto his rifle and pulling it away long enough for her to throw a punch in his direction. Before the punch could make contact, however, both the Rifleman and his weapon vanished in a puff of smoke only to reappear behind Jun a split second later and narrowly miss her ear.
That must be how he was able to shoot from everywhere in the mall, Jun muttered as she swatted away the next bolt with a swift chop. That's going to be a very difficult power to overcome. Once again weaving past the bolts of ki, Jun returned within striking range and connected with a swift knee to the stomach. The Rifleman buckled in pain and countered with a horizontal swipe of his blade-tipped rifle that Jun easily dodged. When she tried to send him sprawling with a hard palm thrust, the Rifleman teleported away and struck her from behind with the back of his weapon.
Stunned from the attack, Jun was left open for the Rifleman's vertical strike that knocked her into the air and allowed the Wisp to keep her afloat on a stream of low-yield bolts of energy. After a few seconds of such tomfoolery, the Rifleman jumped up into the air just as Jun started to come down and slammed her head into the ground with his free hand. His hubris is his weakness, she thought through the throbbing pain in her abdomen where the hail of ki bullets hit her. He could have pierced me easily, but instead he had to show off.
Unfortunately for Jun, the Rifleman stomped on her neck and kicked her over so that she was on her back so that he could aim his rifle right at her head. Quickly sitting up, Jun avoided a fatal shot to the head and let out a sigh of relief before standing back up and striking the Rifleman in the face with a standing elbow. Stunned from the attack, the Rifleman was left open to a snapping jump kick that was immediately followed by a swiping elbow that sent him flying through the air.
In mid-flight, the Rifleman once again teleported behind Jun and fired off another bolt that barely missed her arm. Quickly turning around with a spinning backhanded fist, Jun missed the Wisp thanks to him teleporting away again and was left open to a low blast that grazed her leg and caused her to kneel down with a cry of pain.
As she tended to her leg, the Rifleman suddenly began teleporting again and again, making a field of smoke around Jun as if she were in the eye of a hurricane. I can feel him charging his ki: he's going to shoot from all directions, Jun thought as she quickly tried to figure out what she could do to stop such a devastating attack. Unfortunately, the most she could do was close her eyes and hope that her accelerated healing factor would hold up against the stream of ki bullets that would rain down on her.
Thankfully, Jun would not have to do that, as the Rifleman was suddenly knocked out of his groove by a flying foot to the face. Opening her eyes, Jun looked and saw a thankfully familiar figure landing on the ground after performing a high jump kick. "You came just in time, Chaolan," Jun said as she let her healing factor handle her leg wound and stood back up while Lee ran to her side. "He doesn't like attacking up close: keep that in mind."
"There's no way he can focus on both of us," Lee assured Jun as the Rifleman slowly regained his footing and gently cracked his neck. "I'll go left, and you go right: how does that sound?"
Rather than answering with words, Jun decided to go left and leaving Lee to run to the right in order to surround the Rifleman from both sides. Unable to cope with such a predicament, the Rifleman teleported behind Lee as soon as the two martial artists tried to approach him. Before he could fire off a round into Lee's head, however, the silver-haired playboy spun around and kicked the Rifleman into the window of a toy store behind him. Bouncing off of the stiff glass like a basketball hitting the backboard, the Wisp ricocheted right into a high kick to the jaw immediately followed by a shin strike that drove his head into the ground.
After grinding the heel of his boot into the Rifleman's head for a few seconds, Lee lost track of the Rifleman as the Wisp teleported a few feet away and hastily aimed his firearm at Lee's head. Before a shot could be fired, he felt a pair of hands grab onto his shoulders and pull him down to the ground. Teleporting once again to attack to the new enemy from behind, the Rifleman was shocked to see that the attacker was not in front of him.
Instead, the next blow came from his left and sent him screeching across the floor and forcing him to drop his rifle, which immediately dissipated in a flash of blue fire. "I have figured out your pattern, butcher," Jun said as she focused all of her ki in her left leg and prepared to strike down the Rifleman with her most devastating. "Without it, you are as helpless as the victims you prey upon."
After being struck in the jaw with Jun's Spinning Heel Drop, the Rifleman slowly stumbled backwards as blue smoke from his body and began to eat away at his being. Unlike some of his late companions, however, the gunner did not make a sound as his end came closer. Instead, he stuck out a closed fist in Jun's direction, twisted his wrist so that it was facing upwards, and lifted his middle finger just before the smoke completely consumed his body and his dissipated with a hiss.
Letting out a deep sigh of relief, Jun walked over to Lee with a slight limp thanks to being shot in one of her legs while reassessing what had just happened. This Wisp had a clear advantage with his teleportation abilities, and yet I was able to defeat him considerably quicker than the last two I faced. Allowing herself a thin smile at such an accomplishment as she finally walked over to Lee. Maybe this debacle is making me stronger both in body and in spirit.
Before either Lee or Jun could say anything to each other, Jun felt a familiar buzz in her pocket and immediately took her phone out and flipped it open to greet the mystery caller. What she heard was a familiar voice congratulating her on her victory.
"You defeated that sniper very quickly: my organization is pleased with your success."
"Yes, but people are still dead, Mr. Raven," Jun replied as Lee listened in on her conversation curiously. "This is why I want to involve as few people as possible: I'm sure it was no coincidence that the Wisp attacked while I was in the building. If there are as few holders of the shards as possible, then the attacks will be contained."
"I have come to that conclusion, as well," the ninja responded while Jun started to walk away from the scene of battle. "I will tell my superiors not to worry about the Wisp crisis for the time being. I will get in touch with you again if the time comes."
--
"So the Rifleman Wisp was taken down in a little over a minute," Nagalya muttered as she watched Lee and Jun exit the mall and enter the sea of policemen that surrounded it, observing the scene while standing on the top floor of the parking deck. "And to think that I actually bought all of his boasting."
Straightening out her fedora, the pale-skinned female turned away from the ledge of the parking deck and began walking down to the bottom level. She was masking her ki, so she didn't have to worry about any unexpected confrontations from anyone of importance…although she wouldn't have minded too much if she ran into her two greatest enemies.
Lee Chaolan: the day will soon come where I will make you my willing servant, she thought while she walked towards the elevator and pressed the "down" button. However, first I'm going to have to make you and Kazama submit and realize that the Wisps are the future…and so is our illustrious deity.
However, it would seem that the Wisps that are brave enough to volunteer are not enough to defeat them, Nagalya muttered while she straightened her trenchcoat and entered the opening elevator shaft. Watching the doors close in on her, Nagalya allowed herself a smile form on her white lips. I guess I'll just have to use a new class of warriors…and I know just who to call upon first.
