Chapter Twenty-One: The Home Stretch
The lobby started looking different after all of the friendly faces were whittled off. Although, it was a stretch to call them friendly to begin with. However, as the realization sunk in that the up and coming competitions were going to be pitting the best of the best against- well, the best of the best- it replaced any curiosity into bloodlust Xiaoyu couldn't help but feel like a puffball, standing there in between Bryan Fury and Craig Murdock. The presence of Panda by her foot was her only relief. Where were all of her friends?
Breaking the mounting tension, the TV flickered to life fifteen minutes earlier than normal. Relief washed over Xiaoyu; seeing the somewhat grandfatherly face of Heihachi should calm her down. But Heihachi's face was anything but grandfatherly.
"Yesterday, there was an incident," he began without preamble, the fury rolling off of his wrinkled face like blood down a waterfall. Images flashed across the screen, and Xiaoyu felt her stomach turn as images of dead soldiers crossed the screen.
What's going on? Panda emoted, sitting at ready on the alert.
As if to answer, Heihachi continued "We had a visit from the army last night, around midnight. Anyone with any information regarding the Korean military, or any tournament members- eliminated or remaining- it is within your best interest to report it. We will find the information- just like we'll find who's withholding it."
Korean... Xiaoyu thought.
"That's not foreboding at all," Hwoarang said from behind her. Xiaoyu practically jumped a foot in the air, and both Bryan and Murdock gave her a condescending turn of the nose
"Don't sneak up on me with dead bodies on the screen-!" she gasped, holding her hand over her heart.
"Oh, nasty..." Hwoarang muttered. He supposed the Scotch Guard hadn't been whipped out at that point.
"What's nasty, your misplaced self-confidence?" Julia chided.
"Someone gunned down the Korean army-!" Xiaoyu explained, feeling the pit in her stomach return.
"Tekken Force gunned them down," Julia replied. Seeing Xiaoyu's suspicious surprise at her saying that, she explained, "I think they want to know why the Tekken Force was in the building, not who killed them. Tekken Force has never let an intruder in since I've been in these tournaments."
That seemed to satisfy Xiaoyu's immediate curiosity, and Julia couldn't help but feel a wash of relief. She didn't even know why it mattered to her what this little Chinese girl thought of her, she probably wouldn't keep in touch in between these tournaments.
"Have they started listing the seeds yet?" Julia asked.
"This isn't extreme gardening," Hwoarang snorted.
"Seeds, you know, the term serious fighters use to address the different rounds," Julia retorted.
"They only just finished the newsfeed," Xiaoyu explained as she curled her arms around her chest to mask that disturbed chill in her spine. Hwoarang moved towards Xiaoyu instinctively, but caught himself and began to feel extremely uncomfortable. It was up to Julia to put the comforting arm around Xiaoyu's shoulders.
"The first battle will be between Craig Murdock and Panda."
The fierce face of Panda and her equally animal opponent Craig Murdock filled the screen. Xiaoyu peeled one of her arms from her chest to rub Panda behind the ears. Panda didn't seem too phased at the moment. She was staring forward, her dark black eyes determined.
"The second battle will be between Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima."
A pulse went through the group as they were huddled together. Heihachi was up to something. Xiaoyu felt sympathetic; fighting family had to be one of the worst parts of this competition, and she found herself hoping that she would be paired against someone she didn't know, someone who she could fight completely unreservedly without inhibition...
"The second battle will be between Ling Xiaoyu and Bryan Fury."
For some reason, the old expression "Be careful what you wish for" came to Xiaoyu's mind.
Jin's coattails caught the breeze, and the black cloth flowed behind him like the tail feathers of long, black wings. His dress shoes touched the wizened grass and dried up dirt with his confident, purposeful stride. The day was overcast and relatively cool- perfect for his purposes. The gentle feeling of his bangs wafting against his forehead, the warm shade of the clouds and the graceful curve of the tall trees with the rhythmic sway of the branches, brushing the leaves together; it was a perfectly reverent moment.
He stopped when he came to the memorial stone by the lake. The remnants of light slid lazily through the leaves and rested on the water, as if it were glass and the light was sleeping on it. Resting peacefully somewhere deep beneath the Earth, the undernourished grass and soil, there was a small box beneath that grave stone. A box which contained not the remains of, but objects owned by the deceased Jun Kazama.
It had only seemed appropriate that she be buried by water. Her very spirit seemed to be made of it, the way she adapted so smoothly and the way her grace just flowed from every pore. It was the most selfish act of Jin's life, to drag his mother's memorial from their beautiful country cottage to the Mishima graveyard, buried by the Urban Zaibatsu and all of its treachery. Somehow, even the sanctity of her memory couldn't dispel the even of the evil surrounding her memorial. But he couldn't bear to leave that tiny place in the woods, and he couldn't bear to be so completely uprooted. So he brought his roots with him, and buried them here, in this peaceful corner.
Kneeling down, Jin propped his elbows on his thighs and buried his face in his black gloved hands. Somewhere far off, a bird called. There was the occasional crescendo of the leaves' rustle as the breeze picked up, but it inevitably fell. But even so, Jin recognized the dark feeling that he was not alone. "How long are you going to stand there before you interrupt my sacred moment?" he asked finally.
Reluctantly trailing from her hiding place behind the morgue, Nina trailed into view. "I figured I would give you a chance to make your peace," she murmured.
Her docile response surprised Jin. Standing up, he brushed the stray bits of dirt that his knees had accumulated. "What brings you here to a private place such as this?"
"It may sound a little freaky, but I always feel at home in this sort of a place," she explained. Her stiletto heels sunk ever so slightly into the earth as she approached him.
"Perhaps you relate well to the dead since you've added so many to their number," Jin said with a sardonic smile. Nina returned it, shaking her head slightly as the light picked up off of the gold in her hair. "What do you really want."
"I had to ask, sooner or later, what the Hell really happened in the garage," Nina replied. Her voice was suddenly all business; she wasn't prepared to take "no" for an answer, and Jin saw that.
"I won't tell you," Jin muttered challengingly, turning his back to her as he began to leave the cemetery.
"What, are you afraid of revealing your weakness?" Nina challenged, chasing after him. "I'll find out sooner or later, I have my ways with these things."
"Weakness?" Jin laughed, and turned to face her. "Do you really think it was weakness that blew those doors from their hinges?" The heavy silence lay between them. Nina couldn't respond, and she felt herself begin to fiddle with her coat hem. "Just as I thought," Jin remarked.
Nina whipped her pistol from the holster hidden beneath her coat pocket. "Now would be a good time to stop thinking, it's only getting you into trouble," she hissed.
"Alright, then I'll let you do the talking. Who put you up to it?" Jin asked. He began a slow circle, keeping his eyes fixed on Nina's, making no motion towards a weapon of any sort. "Hwoarang?"
"No, stop moving."
"No, he would much rather deliver himself, he'd never get a woman to do it..."
"Stop now."
"Heihachi?"
"I mean it, Kazama, stop now."
"Well, I think at the moment, he'd prefer me alive. I suppose that leaves only one sick enough to send an assassin to the cemetery-"
The sound of the pistol going off ripped through the peace and quiet of the cemetery. It had been aimed for Jin, but within a moment he had dropped to the ground, ducked, and rolled. Another pistol was heard clicking into place, and Nina realized with a sick feeling in her gut that it had clicked right beside her head.
"Kazuya," Jin finished with a wry smile. Nina's pistol was still pointed forward, but the other pistol was right by Nina's temple- no chance she could dodge a shot like that.
"He really hates you, you know..." Nina stammered, trying to look over her shoulder at her assailant. "How the Hell you managed to get your own father to hate you that much, I'll never know, but he damn well does."
"Surely someone with such a... congenial relationship with her sister should understand that family ties make the greatest knots in nooses."
Recognizing the futility of holding a gun forward to a non-existent prey, she dropped it to the ground. "Well," she murmured. "You haven't fired yet."
Without preamble, Jin pushed Nina out of his lock grip. "I have a proposition." Turning and continuing in his circle.
"You're offering me more than Kazuya," Nina inferred. She gently reached her hand out, in order to "steady herself."
With a short laugh, Jin shook his head. "What, so you could betray me, go back to him and get even more? Competitive business, maybe, but I don't have any interest in that. I have a different kind of a proposition." He stopped, turning his back to her.
Urging her hand forward, Nina curled her fingers around the handle of her precious pistol. She felt much steadier with the true, metal form beneath her gloved hands. "A proposition over the grave of your dead mother, that seems beneath even you," she snorted.
"Oh no," Jin said, turning and kneeling to be at eye level with her. When their eyes met his flashed with something curious, something Nina couldn't recognize in him. Was it that same eerie yellow glow from before? Or something even deeper? "It's the sort of proposition mother would be proud of."
"Well, Xiaoyu, it's been awhile," a deep, Santa Claus sort of voice chuckled.
Xiaoyu turned in her cafe seat, and she literally stopped breathing. For a moment, she thought her heartbeat might have stopped. Thank God it wasn't so, because being caught by Heihachi- the infamous, dangerous, and incomprehensibly charismatic leader of the Tekken Zaibatsu- without breath or a beating heart was like calling Saint Peter and asking to join him for dinner.
"Hi Heihachi," Xiaoyu squeaked. Fortunately, most people expected that sort of behavior from her, so he didn't seem nonplussed. Sitting across the table from her, Heihachi drummed his fingers against the table. There was something infinitely obscure about someone of such wealth and power sitting at the table in a Starbucks.
"Xiaoyu, I would like to ask you some questions," he asked. His voice sounded amiable enough, and the question could feasibly be twisted into some nicer context. Xiaoyu knew him too well, though.
"What kinds of questions," she asked, trying to put on her "serious face."
"The sorts of questions that can only be answered in my office, at my chair," he replied. His casualness was disarming. She knew exactly what he was talking about. His own personal lie detector set up right there in his office. It wasn't a good chair to be in.
"And if I say no?" she asked.
Heihachi cocked his head ever so gently to the side, and Xiaoyu noticed a man with a newspaper looking awful stiff. Perhaps the semi-automatic strapped around his waist made him that stiff. "You don't," he answered. "It's standard, of course, of all finalists."
At the moment, there really was no way out, and Xiaoyu knew it. Heihachi had a way of catching people when chucking tables and chairs wasn't in their best interest, and being in a Starbucks during coffee hour fit the bill. Sighing, Xiaoyu realized This will be my second partial abduction in 24 hours..!