Minutes ago, Nagalya had orchestrated another plan to eliminate the threats posed by Jun Kazama and Lee Chaolan by introducing the most potent Wisp yet: the Samurai. Using his hypnotic fumes and deceptive quickness, the Samurai made his mark on everyone within the Mishima Heavy Industries main Tokyo facility by placing all of the employees under his spell and leaving Lee Chaolan battered and helpless.
With the silver-haired playboy out of the way, Nagalya and the Samurai Wisp turned their attention to Jun, subjugating her by using her code of morals and ethics against her and have the Zaibatsu scientists restrain her while the two fiends made it a point to humiliate her. Just when it seemed that Jun would have to break her moral code in order to save herself, however, an unlikely savior arrived and came to her rescue.
"I figured you would have been able to handle these buffoons by yourself, Jun," the man said to Jun before helping her onto her feet and leading her to a nearby chair to sit down at. "All you had to do was toss aside your silly conscience and victory would have been yours for sure."
"Sadly, I'm not quite as ruthless as you are," Jun replied between long breaths before looking up to her savior and allowing herself a gratifying smile. "I still have not given up on my code of ethics, Kazuya!"
"'Kazuya?'" Nagalya repeated with a raised eyebrow. "Does that mean that you are the one and only Kazuya Mishima, the Cold-Blooded Prince who wrapped this city in a cloak of terror only a couple of months ago? My my, this is a surprise!"
"I suppose I should be honored to witness a fan of my work," Kazuya replied with a smirk as he assumed his fighting stance while the Samurai Wisp walked past Nagalya and prepared to dispatch the interloper. "However, I should make it clear that I do not tolerate plagiarism, and your operations seem to closely mimic my own."
"Don't confuse the Wisps with the b-movie rejects that you created," Nagalya said with a hint of resentment. "It'll take more than a bunch of glorified stuntmen to defeat one, and unless you have one of the shards on you, you don't stand a chance!" With that statement fresh in her mind, Nagalya nodded to her Wisp associate and pointed her index finger in Kazuya direction. "Your Devil-ridden soul will make quite an asset to our god's resurrection. Get him, Samurai!"
With a nod of its head, the Samurai burst into action and came at Kazuya with inhuman speed and struck Kazuya on the forehead. The impact of such an attack would have incapacitated an ordinary human, but Kazuya was far from an ordinary man. In fact, he stood in place for the entire attack and smiled as blood trickled down from his forehead and onto his eyebrows.
"Impressive: not everyone can cause me to bleed," Kazuya said as his smirk became an evil grin and his left eye glowed a fiery red. "Unfortunately, it will take a lot more than brute strength and sharp weapons to defeat me!" Reaching for the Samurai's rod to snatch it away from him, Kazuya's grin disappeared quickly in the wake of the fact that his hand went right through the weapon despite how he could still feel the weapon on his forehead. "What manner of trickery is this?"
"It's like I said: it doesn't matter how powerful you are," Nagalya answered tauntingly while the Samurai removed his rod from Kazuya's forehead and plunged the end of it into Kazuya's stomach before knocking him away with a vertical swing. "If you don't come to the party with the right kind of accessories, then you won't be able to dance correctly!"
Kazuya landed on his hands and flipped back onto his feet just in time to duck under a horizontal swipe and roll away from the quick downwards attack that followed. "Jun, what are these shards that this harlot refers to?" Kazuya quickly asked Jun as he returned to her side while the Samurai pulled his weapon from the crack in the ground he formed.
"L-look in the slot at the computer terminal over there," Jun managed to gasp out as the gas she tried her best not to completely lose her mind in the wake of the gas she had inhaled thanks to the Samurai Wisp. "I came here today to analyze it: it should still be in there…"
Not bothering to take the crucial second needed to say "thank you," Kazuya quickly opened the slot of the computer terminal Jun had referred to and reached out to pick up the blue metal shard that was within. When he touched it however, Kazuya grit his teeth in agony as his entire body became engulfed in teal electricity. After a few seconds of struggling, the Cold-Blooded Prince let go of the shard and gripped his hand in pain.
Nagalya, who had watched the scene unfold, let loose a loud and mocking laughter at the display of futility. "This is too much: here you come trying to save the day, and you can't even touch the only weapon that can possibly stand up to the people you're trying to take out," the pale-skinned woman managed to sputter out in between laughs. "Surely the irony of this doesn't escape you: the shard is even more poisonous to you than it is to us!"
"I have heard rumors of metals such as these," Kazuya said out loud as he looked down at the shard with curiosity. "There were even reports of Heihachi planning to use something like this to nullify my powers. Interesting indeed…"
To Nagalya's surprise, Kazuya reached down and tried to pick up the shard again with more electricity shooting out of the object as a result. "What do you think you're doing, idiot? If you couldn't touch it a moment ago, what makes you think you could go for it now?"
However, Kazuya did not recoil from the powerful surge of energy that flowed from the shard. In fact, this time he was able to pick it up off the ground and wrap his hand around it, even though the discharge continued to attack him. "If you were dealing with a lesser person, then maybe you would have kept your advantage of intangibility," Kazuya stated through a face wracked with pain and anger. "However, I am not a lesser person. I am Kazuya Mishima, and you are scum that is about to wiped off the sole of my shoe!"
With his body crackling with power not his own, Kazuya charged at the Samurai Wisp that had waited patiently for him to stop stalling and punched him in the stomach with all of his inhuman might. The Samurai responded accordingly by using his free hand to grab onto Kazuya's neck and slam him into the floor after lifting him into the air. With Kazuya ground, the Samurai lifted his weapon and brought his weapon down on the gray-haired man's back.
To Kazuya's credit, the numbing pain he was already in thanks to the shard in his closed fist was enough to make the blow seem like a minor itch and he stood back up with no ill effects from the attack. Gritting his teeth as he used the endurance granted to him through intensive physical therapy and training, Kazuya punched the Samurai right in the face and caused him to take a couple of steps back from the stunning attack.
"Devils fighting devils only leads to chaos…"
At least now I know why the leader of G-Corporation said not to involve someone with the Devil Gene, Jun thought while she watched Kazuya fight on her behalf despite the obvious agony he was being put through thanks to the shard. If someone with that power tries to touch the shard, the shard attacks him mercilessly. The shard must possess some sort of power that negates an evil power like that, much like the power of the Kazamas.
However, I need to have faith in Kazuya: he is not the same Devil-ridden soul that he used to be, Jun smiled as Kazuya countered the Samurai's forward kick with a low foot sweep that was immediately followed by a powerful hook punch that sent the warrior spiraling to the ground. He has trained hard to overcome any weaknesses that being possessed by a demon would bring, by embracing the good inside of him and using it as a weapon. That kind of resolve is something that no shard or demon can break!
Even though Kazuya's resolve was not brittle, that didn't stop the Samurai Wisp from trying to break a more physical aspect of Kazuya like his skull. After successfully connecting with a second forward kick, the Samurai immediately followed with a strike to the top of Kazuya's head, forcing the Japanese martial artist to back away and use his free hand to rub where he had been struck.
Weaving to his right to avoid another vertical attack, Kazuya knocked the Samurai into the air with a quick standing uppercut: a textbook Wind Godfist that had become such a crucial part of Kazuya's offense over the years. With his opponent airborne, Kazuya pressed onward with a snapping kick, a quick jab, and an impaling knee to keep the Samurai from hitting the ground before sending him spiraling away with a standing roundhouse kick.
The Samurai recovered almost instantly after hitting the ground and returned the favor by knocking Kazuya almost to the ceiling with a two-handed upwards swing of his rod, and jumped up after him using amazing leg strength to propel him further upwards with a rising strike before bashing him towards the floor with a final downwards smash.
Kazuya landed on his feet and quickly jumped backwards as the Samurai returned back down to Earth and attempted to smash the Devil-ridden warrior's head in with a falling slash of his rod. Seeing an opportunity to attack, Kazuya ran at the Samurai with his fist raised in preparation for one of his more devastating attacks. Unfortunately, the Samurai recovered quicker than Kazuya would have liked and used Kazuya's forward momentum to pick him up off the ground with the pointed end of his rod in the gray-haired warrior's stomach and slam him back onto the ground like a throw rug.
"Dammit," Kazuya growled as he gripped his stomach. "Even if I can overcome the protective barrier that this shard of holy metal gives off, it's keeping me from using the full extent of my powers." Even though the sinister martial artist knew no one was listening to him, talking to himself was a habit that he had not yet broken. Of course, no one dared to tell him that doing such a thing was considered a sign of insanity, so he never addressed the problem thoroughly. "I wonder if any of weakened attacks are affecting him."
"What's the matter, tough guy? Are you feeling tired," Nagalya asked with her voice full of mocking contempt. "Maybe handling that shard is too much for you, after all. You may talk a big game, but when it comes time to put your money where your mouth is all you can do is choke on your words!"
"You have no room to talk, harlot," Kazuya spat back as he crawled back onto his feet just in time to punch the Samurai right in the facemask. "All you've been doing is standing around and gloating while your lackey does all the work. How about you lead by example and face a true master."
"This, coming from someone who hid in the shadows for a month before getting his butt kicked by one of his own creations," Nagalya rolled her eyes at Kazuya's response and shook her head. "Before then, you hid yourself from the world like a scared child for nearly twenty years. If you're going to talk down to me, at least try and back it up with your own examples."
"…you seem to know an awful lot about me, harlot," Kazuya said after a pause due to the Samurai Wisp trying to knock his head off like a batter hitting a t-ball: an attempt which he ducked accordingly. "Have we met somewhere before?"
"You could say that I did my homework on you, Kazuya," Nagalya answered with a shrug before her facial expression became more serious. "I'd go more in-depth as to our relationship, but I don't want to distract you from getting your skull cracked open like an eggshell!"
Distracted by talking to the pale-skinned villainess and trying to keep the shard in his hand from knocking him unconscious with static discharge, Kazuya was left vulnerable to the Samurai Wisp's next attack: a choke sleeper that surprised the gray-haired martial artist enough to force him onto his knees and drop the ever-important shard needed to combat his adversary. Enough though Kazuya's mastery of the Devil Gene and natural Mishima toughness granted him a fairly high degree of resistance to pain, not even he could survive having the life strangled out of him.
I have to help him, Jun thought as she tried to get out of her seat, only to cry out in pain and fall onto the floor. Unfortunately the fumes are still disorienting me, and the bruises on my back haven't completely healed yet. Despite this, Jun instead opted on crawling towards the point of battle with unmatched bravery. Kazuya…I swore that I would save you, and I'm not about to break my promise now!
As Jun slowly willed her battered body into forward motion, Kazuya squirmed and writhed as he tried to break the chokehold applied to him by an enemy that he could no longer touch. "Isn't that sweet? You want to save the father of your children," Nagalya commented on Jun's tenacity before kneeling down and whispering in her ear. "I told you I was going to humiliate you, but putting you in agony knowing that you could not save him is a pretty sweet deal, too…"
"WAI-YA!!"
With a piercing battle cry echoing throughout the large room, the Samurai's choking hold was broken in the wake of the sole of a flying foot crashing into the side of his head. Kazuya coughed and gasped as he picked up the shard once again and sent the Samurai flying away with a powerful mid-section punch. "I…was waiting for you, idiot," Kazuya growled as his armored savior ran up next to him while he got back onto his feet. "If I knew you were going to take this long, I wouldn't have wasted so much time."
"I was trying to keep from having my brain melt like a stick of butter, thank you very much," Lee spat back through the voice box in his Tekkenshu helmet that he was wearing. "Still, there was no way I was going to be indebted to a scumbag like you. Now we're even…"
"Do not forget that I was the one who helped your pathetic robot company when it was about to go up in flames," Kazuya replied with a smirk before wincing in pain from the crackling shard in his hand. "If you wish argue in futility, though, you may do it after I finish this fight."
Closing his eyes, Kazuya went off into a deep trance while Lee watched on in confusion. After what seemed like hours but was, in truth, only seconds, the Cold-Blooded Prince of the Mishima clan open his eyes and the shard's crackling died down while the pupil of his mutated left eye shone with a brilliant sapphire glare. "My name is Kazuya Mishima: my will is indomitable," Kazuya said to no one on particular he turned to Nagalya and slowly began walking towards her, "and my fist is untamable. Trifle with me at your own peril: I will be glad to usher you into an early grave!"
"Hey, I'm not your dance partner today, Mishima," Nagalya said as she stepped away from Jun as Kazuya slowly made his way towards her with the intent to cause her great bodily harm. "If you can take down my Wisp, then MAYBE I'll join in on the dance at another date and we can have some fun."
"Hmph…cowardly whore," Kazuya said with a scoff as he turned around to block the Samurai's attack with the metallic studs of his red gloves while Nagalya walked away from the battle site. "I will hold you to that challenge: keep a close watch as I demonstrate what your fate will be once I deal with this fool."
Having successfully parried the rod, Kazuya crouched down and rose back up to send the Samurai flying away with a devastating leaping uppercut: the Mishima-ryu's coveted Thunder Godfist technique. The Samurai landed flat on its back and let out a puff of smoke upon impact before standing back up and readying his weapon for another pass.
Grabbing onto the point of his weapon so that his hands were gripping both ends, the Samurai blocked a standing axe kick and countered with a swift knee to Kazuya's stomach immediately followed by a strike to the back of his neck using the hilt of the rod. With Kazuya downed from the attack, the Samurai lifted up his weapon and pounded onto his spine with rapid strikes.
After the eighth strike, Kazuya rolled away and let out a quick grunt as he stood back up and rubbed his back. "It must be nice, being a specter," Kazuya said as he moved his head to the side and avoided a quick thrust. "Since there's no need to breathe, your stamina is considerably higher. If I had employed you during my quest to take over Tokyo, things might have turned out differently."
Before the Samurai could return his rod to a neutral position, Kazuya plunged his fist into the Wisp's abdomen with such force that he actually lifted the warrior off the ground and gave him enough time to kick him while he was off his feet. This in turn gave Kazuya enough time to take a step forward and bring him back down to the ground with a Soul Thrust punch.
The Samurai once again landed on his feet, but he did not raise his rod to prepare for Kazuya's next attack. Instead, the Samurai lifted his free hand and fired off a dark bolt of energy, followed by several other bolts in an attempt to drown Kazuya in lethal rain. However, the Cold-Blooded Prince put his arms up in a guarding position and ran through the rain like a man fighting off a hailstorm. Once he was in position, Kazuya made the Samurai's new technique futile and sent him flying away with a jumping Slash kick.
Landing flat on hiss back, the Samurai struggled to get back onto his feet only to fall back down again in the wake of Kazuya's brutal axe kick, followed by a rapid series on stomps onto his chest. The Samurai tried to counter by blasting a surge of blue smog into Kazuya's face, but the seasoned veteran instinctly used his arm to keep his mouth and nose from inhaling the dehabilitating smoke and kicked the Samurai away like a goalie making a punt…
…causing the Samurai to roll right in Lee's direction, who had been waiting for the battle to come back to him. The Samurai blew more smoke in Lee's face, but the silver-haired playboy laughed it off with muffled glee. "Sorry, freak: this helmet I'm wearing filters out stuff like that," Lee said as he ground his heel into the Samurai's neck while tapping the side of his helmet. "You may have caught me off-guard before, but I never make the same mistake twice!"
After a few seconds of grinding, Lee grabbed onto the monster by his throat and helped him back onto his feet only to knock him away by ramming his knee into the Samurai's protected face. The impact of the attack was enough to create a small crack in the mask and cause the Samurai to reel back in pain. "Finally, now we're getting somewhere," Lee said before sending the Wisp back into Kazuya's direction with a Pulse Blast kick. "It looks like your armor isn't as impenetrable as I thought. You just have to keep on trying until you succeed at last!"
"Your observational commentary is quite annoying, Chaolan," Kazuya said as his body crackled with his natural electric blue ki. "When you find a weakness, try not announcing it to the world. All it does is tell your opponent to watch himself." Building rotational velocity, Kazuya ducked down low and spun towards the staggering Samurai like a top in preparation for his most lethal and devastating technique in his arsenal: the Lightning Screw Godfist.
After the third spin, Kazuya sprung up and shattered the Samurai's damaged mask with a powerful leaping uppercut to send him flying to where Jun was finally getting back onto her feet. The Samurai clutched his neck as if he were choking, dropping his coveted battle rod and rolling across the floor like he was on fire. After a few seconds of spasming, the Samurai ceased moving and dissipated in a fiery blue haze while his weapon did the same.
After taking several deep breaths and smiling at completing a battle well fought, Kazuya turned to the approaching Jun and scoffed. "Really, Jun, this was not an impossible battle even when you were in such a state. You could have interfered anytime you wished thanks to the abilities that I granted you…"
"I didn't want to spoil the moment, I suppose," Jun replied with a smile before putting a hand on Kazuya's shoulder. "I am grateful that you came to my aid, Kazuya: it was…sweet of you."
"I would prefer that you didn't use such weak terms to describe what I did," Kazuya pulled his shoulder away from Jun and pulled out a pair of sunglasses from his pocket. "You are in my circle, and thus one of my allies. Whether or not I like it, I have little choice but to protect my allies until there comes a time when I do not need them anymore."
"What made you think that we needed your help, Kazuya," Lee said with contempt brimming in his voice while he took off his helmet. "In fact, I'm wondering how it is you came just when things were starting to get rough. If you were here from the start, we could have stopped wasting time and finished the Wisp business quickly."
"I did not know about the Wisp's movements until today, when I spotted you struggling against the buffoon in the armor while I was overseeing some of my more personal projects at Mishima Heavy Industries," Kazuya said with equal contempt, making the bad blood between the two brothers evident to Jun. "However, now that I am here, I will try and aid you the best I can."
"And why would you do that, Kazuya?" Lee asked while Kazuya put on his sunglasses. "You never were an altruist, and you probably never will be. Why put your life on the line for something you could care less about?"
"These Wisps are a mockery of what I set out to accomplish two months ago: their actions are inexcusable. I will not tolerate such blatant plagiarism of my accomplishments," Kazuya said before turning around to where Nagalya had stood when he last laid eyes on her only to see that she had left the premises. "Furthermore, that woman's aura is…oddly familiar. I do not know why, but I intend to find out."
With that explanation in mind, the three warriors walked away from the site of battle and began their their journey the exit of the facility, leaving the scientists that Kazuya had dispatched earlier to the ambulance that Jun was in the process of summoning. Even though the reason Kazuya gave had truth in it, there was more to his motives than simple pride.
It might have been because Jun and Lee were his two closest allies in his war against G-Corporation. It might have been the result of any feelings he might have had for Jun, the mother of his offspring. It might even have been some sort of brotherly companionship he shared with Lee.
But whatever the reason was, Kazuya cursed himself for thinking that way. The Cold-Blooded Prince should not have allowed himself to feel that way towards his allies: it was unbecoming of a man of his stature…
