A/N: Hello all, once again. Finally, we've reached the end of this long toil toward conclusion! This is the first epilogue...for now, the only one. This will tie into Déjà Vu for the simple reason that it's an alternate timeline (with a LOT of editing); a what-if alternative. This is also the prologue to the sequel, 'Boldly Going' – hence the name of the epilogue.
This has many loose ends and assumptions to be made for the purpose of the follow-up...and for those who like a little bit of SUSPENSE...*insert loud dramatic orchestral crash here*...the loose ends are left with one great big fat one at the very end that begs for conclusion...which ya ain't getting for a VERY long time ) yes I will follow it up. That'll make it worse, mwaha...I can guarantee it'll cause some grief.
Anyhow, onto something different for once...the thanks.
Thank you very much to all my casual reviewers:
Rockstar_Freeza (aka, Freeza_The_Rock_Star...hehe), Ksim3000, miriya valentine, Krit, Kane x Lita4eva, ikhan11, Forevermore, Kotou, Mornings Light. You guys all ROCK for reading my story and reviewing at least once...it means so much to me...*sniffle*...you're all so great! Truly, you've made the writing process a joy for me.
Thanks to my frequent reviewers too...you lot are the BOMB!
Chibi-Sugababy, knightwing, DOOMSDAY1, Sapphire17...wow that's the lot o_O Ah well, you guys are THE BEST!
And of course, thank you SO MUCH to my favourite/idol authors:
Avatar Infidel, Chibi-Sugababy, Princess Michelle, Valondra Deva Phoenix, Riggs...there are many, many more of you...and you can probably tell who you are by my reviews of your stories. Dun feel bad if I haven't mentioned you on this thank you/worship list...it just means in my state of hysteria I've forgotten to mention a few names ^_^; If you have a drooling and gushing review from me, consider yourself part of my thank you for being such a wonderful influence list =D
Righty, now that that's over and done with...on with the GRAND FINALE!
***
Jakunen Mirai – Epilogue 1 – Boldly Going
***
Sitting at home, watching the heavy rain streak down the thick coloured glass of the old window beside her, Sheree felt particularly useless. She'd been at home with her mother three hours now; she'd already unpacked her belongings, and had spent the last two hours sitting by the bedside, praying and hoping the elderly woman would awake soon to notice her presence. The cancer caused her great pain, but not yet to a debilitating level. With the many hours of day and night she would sleep, she could still drag her frail old body around the house when need be.
But Sheree on the other hand wanted nothing more than to see her mother get better, and go back to live in Japan. Even though she'd been away nearly a full day by now, she could still feel that wonderful kiss. The soft, gentle, warm lips of her object of desire still lingered on her own...whenever she closed her eyes, she felt his lips closing around hers, and at the same time, granting her access to his mouth. She remembered the taste and smell of him, the feel of his chest, his arms around her...she missed him so much she could cry. It was worse than a junkie being denied his entire fix.
She remembered, after a while, the envelope he'd slipped her. As she stood up to go and rummage about in her bag, she felt something grasp her skirt.
When she looked down, the elderly woman was smiling up at her, holding the bottom of her short business skirt in her bony old hand. "Sheree? Issat you?"
The younger woman smiled happily, and leaned down to kiss her mother's forehead. "Yes Mum, it's me...how are you?"
Frail old hands wrapped around her neck loosely, and a hoarse, weak laugh erupted into the cool air. "Happier than I've been in years! I've missed you, sweetheart..."
For just a moment, Japan seemed irrelevant. She hugged her mother gently, laughing with her happiness, and kissed her forehead again. "I've missed you too, Mum...I came back to help you..."
"I can't be helped, Sheree. The medication is too expensive..."
Sheree shook her head. "We'll find a way, Mum, don't worry. We always do..." With that, she stood and rummaged about in her handbag until she found the envelope. As she tore it open, she sat back down on the chair beside the bed, and read the note that fell out onto her lap.
She gasped, and put a hand to her lips. Her eyes watered, her body tensed...she went into shock.
Her mother tugged on her skirt again. "Sweetheart...what is it?"
Finally Sheree regained her composure. After waving the note at her mother for a moment, the old woman frowned. "It's in Chinese or something..."
She chuckled. "Japanese, actually..." Wiping a tear on the back of her sleeve, she read the note aloud. "Losing a friend is like losing an arm; suddenly, you're half as useful as you were before..." She shifted and read down a little further, then translated again. "But before we become useless on our own, here is a final token of our esteem. The riches of the world can't buy friendship, but we can only hope that what we offer you now can help your mother on the road to recovery."
She stopped there, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "He's such an angel..."
Mrs Brown blinked, and smiled. "Boyfriend?"
She shook her head, blushing. "No, no...my old employer. Kazuya Mishima."
The final part of the note she read to herself. It was written separately from the rest of the note, down the bottom, almost as an afterthought. Take care, Sheree...I'm going to miss you. Remember, you're always welcome as a family member at the Zaibatsu.
There was another piece of paper behind the note...she already knew it was a cheque from reading the letter. She almost feared to look at it...what did it contain, a few hundred, a few thousand dollars? How much money would he give to a woman he didn't even know, who probably only had a few years left at the most?
Thinking of the poor frail, pain-wracked woman, she took a breath and took a peek at the cheque. She almost choked.
"One...hundred...thousand...US dollars..." The colour drained from her face. She'd never seen a cheque addressed with such high value! And it was to her! There must've been some mistake...but no, the digits read $100 000, and the words were clear; one hundred thousand dollars. It was American dollars too...
After a moment, she laughed. She squealed and cheered...this meant there was enough money to save her mother! With the treatment now available to them, she could have her mother tended to and cared for, treated, and back on her feet...and she could go back to Japan! Tears of happiness fell down her cheeks. "...You angel!"
Suddenly, the beating rain on that gloomy English day seemed unable to drown the happiness within the small, musty house.
***
Five years later
Gaidoku had become, very swiftly, the main project within the Mishima Zaibatsu. Temporary vaccines had been found, and failed. The Zaibatsu was now working on alternative methods to destroy the virus, and major funding from all departments had been put into the research critical for mankind's survival.
Kazuya Mishima, now fifty eight years old, sat back in his leather chair in his office, reading the latest reports on the spread of the pandemic. As of yesterday, over three hundred thousand deaths had been accounted for as a result of the virus. Several other companies and institutes had made progress, but none as far as the Mishima Zaibatsu's powerful scientific sector. Or so he thought...apparently the G-Corporation department in New South Wales, Australia, had made a breakthrough in their research. They believed that disrupting the protein coat of the virus would work; no other organisms had a coat quite the same, since they were made of lipids. They also had been trying to use antigens to aid whatever process they used to destroy the virus in targeting the pathogen. Everyone thought those Aussies were insane...but now, they'd found success.
Other major news was brought to his attention; Abel himself had become a victim of his creation; in his old age and weakening health, he's been particularly susceptible to infection, and had died from the disease he'd created. Poetic justice had been served, but true justice could never even dream of doing the same. At least the evil was gone...all that was left was the cleaning up behind the disaster that still dominated the world's consciousness.
For a moment, his vision wavered. Maybe he finally needed some food...though he hadn't felt hungry all week. Come to think of it, he'd felt pretty rotten over the entire week too...dripping nose at times, lack of energy, irritability through the roof...he'd put it down to stress. After all, it couldn't be Gaidoku – that took less than 72 hours to take effect!
He stood up and stretched...time to find something to eat. As he did, suddenly he felt as if his head had shot through the ceiling and floated up into the sky. His body felt the opposite – as if it had turned to lead. He clutched his head with both hands...what was wrong with him? Before he could think of what it might have been, everything went black. He felt himself falling, falling...
As he hit the ground, he lost consciousness. Just as he did, his secretary walked inside...opened to door...and saw her boss lying on the ground, unconscious.
She screamed.
***
He felt repulsed, to say the least.
"There is no way in HELL I'll help you."
The older man before him folded his arms over his chest, and sighed. "Why not? I've never done anything to you."
Why should he help the old man? He was evil, there was no doubt about it...evil enough to throw his own father off the face of a cliff. Evil enough to make an already corrupt company even bigger...evil enough to give rise to...
"Forget it." His father was a disgust and a disgrace to him, his very essence...everything he was. He could not defy and deface the memory of his mother, Jun Kazama, by working with this hideous apparition.
The man sitting opposite him in the café slipped his shades off and stuffed them in a pocket. The eyes that lay behind them were enough to make him draw in a sharp breath; the right eye was a deep ebony – lacking emotion; love, hate, everything – and the left was a glowing crimson; inhuman. Still, Jin was compelled to look into them, stare at that scarred, beaten face.
"I'm serious, Kazama. If we don't work together on this we'll simply end up beating the shit out of each other, and when weakened, Heihachi may be able to take either of us out...or both of us, if he had his way. He wants both of us dead."
Jin's stomach flopped about inside him uncomfortably. Why should he work with this man? "I don't know. I don't know what agenda you have other than to kill your own father..." The urge to kill the man right there and then rose like the bile in the back of his throat.
Kazuya's stare could have turned anything to ice. "My agenda is simple; rid the world of Heihachi. He's beaten me before, and likewise we've both been lucky enough to beat him too. But this time he has the Tekkenshu...we can't be too careful..."
"Excuse me...'we'?"
Kazuya frowned. "Yes, 'we'! If we don't at least TRY to form an alliance, at least temporarily, our childish bickering will be the end of us! Look, you can do what you like to me after this tournament...but what sort of a fool do you think I am? Let Heihachi continue his reign of terror?! Put your emotions aside...unlike Heihachi I mean you no harm. And that is why we should work together for a common cause. Four fists are better than two."
The idea sounded good, as if it could almost work...but the last thing Jin wanted to do was to work with that man. Somehow, something inside told him not to be so emotional about the entire business...he was sure it was the memory of his mother. Had she loved this man? How did she love this man? With all the evidence he'd been presented to by his mother's reactions to the word 'father', and Heihachi's contempt for Kazuya, Jin had always related his conception to rape. The thought had always sickened him from the moment it dawned on him. But somehow...he thought otherwise, deep inside. If Kazuya had committed such a crime, why were either of them right here, right now? They wouldn't be talking, Kazuya wouldn't be offering an alliance, and Jin most likely would have been aborted in the early stages.
That something deep inside of him made him make that single, rash decision he went with; he could kill his father later, after he'd dealt with his grandfather. He sighed, and sat back. "Fine. I'll consider you an ally until Heihachi is gone. From then, it's all on."
They agreed to it together, and parted ways. The tournament in two weeks would be interesting...
But that something inside Jin, once again, made him feel uneasy; was he becoming his father? He was following in his footsteps, after all...killing the father he hated so much to relieve his own pain. Was he becoming Kazuya? Or worse...in dealing with Heihachi too, was he becoming something even more terrible?
Was this such a good idea?
That argument from nearly ten years ago flashed through Jin's mind as he read through the papers put before him. He was in an office, sitting on the other side of the desk from the owner of the room. There were many documents to read through...but the most important was in the hands of the man opposite, dressed in an expensive black suit with a dark blue silk tie.
"Apparently the entire Zaibatsu's been left to you, Mr Kazama." The man commented, leafing through the pages of what seemed to be a will. "The Zaibatsu, the buildings, the department...the bank account...everything he owned has been left in your name." He seemed almost astonished at what had been left behind. The world's largest, most powerful company had been left in the hands of a mere thirty-year-old man who'd never been involved in business in his life.
The tears forced their way to the surface once again, but Jin blinked them back. He'd hated his father for so long, but over the last ten years, he'd learned to love the man. The enigmatic Kazuya Mishima turned out to be the perfect father – he never got in the boy's way, but was always there when he was needed. He never fawned over him, but he was immensely proud of any achievement on Jin's behalf. They had never, ever fought...unless it was a sparring match in the dojo. Kazuya's quiet, mysterious acceptance of a son who'd hated him so heatedly to begin with was the one thing that made this so hard, however.
Finally, Jin spoke. His deep voice was almost too quiet to hear above the whirr of the air-conditioning unit above them. "They couldn't save him?"
The man shook his head. "The G-Corporation took his body after the hospital decided they could do nothing more. They tried everything, even reversing the damage in a regen-tank, using samples of his DNA from before the second tournament. It's been a month since he collapsed, and they haven't been able to help him. I'm sorry, Mr Kazama...but he's gone. That's why you're here."
Jin bit his lower lip and nodded. "It's just hard to believe...he was fighting it so well. Thanks to that damned gene...he almost survived." Unable to look up for the moment, he glanced through the papers once more. He was still in shock...the entire Zaibatsu was his. The whole lot...everything his father had owned. It was a lot, to say the least...head offices in almost every major country in the world, billions upon billions of dollars in value...he was now the CEO of the world's largest, most powerful company. He, Jin Kazama, a little country boy, a warrior, was the CEO of the Mishima Zaibatsu.
After wrapping the meeting up, Jin left in silence, and headed back to the mansion. It seemed as empty as his soul without Kazuya there; not that he'd seen much of him of late anyway. Before he'd contracted the feared disease he'd waged war against, he'd been secluded in his office for most of the day; either that, or with the scientists in the lab, or meeting other corporation leaders. He'd been so busy that he'd had no time for Jin. Even though he was a grown man, he still missed his father's presence. He hated himself...both his parents had died as a result of his negligence...he knew Kazuya was feeling ill that last week...but he ignored it. He knew his mother was in trouble when that ogre arrived...but again, he placed no emphasis on the danger of the situation, and she died.
Now, he knew that he had to make it up to his father...his mother...the both of them. In his mother's memory, he'd become a more peaceful, less irrational man...he'd loved his father, stayed loyal to the both of them...and promised never to even think of killing another soul. So far, his hands were completely clean of blood; he'd never killed anyone before, and never intended to in the future. To make it up to Kazuya...for the hatred of the past, for not saving him...he knew exactly what he would do.
He grabbed a phone book, found the number he was looking for, and dialled it.
After a long pause, someone answered. "Yes, hello...I'd like to make an enquiry about changing my name..." In memory of my father.
***
With a sigh, the young woman, dressed in an almost cliché white coat, stared
into the cool glass at the figure that lay frozen within the contraption. He
was beautiful...young, and very healthy...except he'd died of the same disease
that over three hundred thousand others had. Hopefully the G-Corporation would
be able to help others in the future...even if they couldn't help this one man.
"Hanii, are you going to stare into that unit all day?"
She turned to see a balding old white man standing behind her, hands in his pockets. "Sorry Carter...I just can't help thinking there's something more we could have done. He doesn't deserve this..."
He rested a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, there will be something we can do for him. That's why he's in a stasis unit!" He smiled, and led her away from the cold laboratory. "We'll be sending him off with three others, all in stasis units. They died here and now...but in the future, we may be able to save them...to prevent further contamination, they'll be kept in cryogenic stasis in orbit above the planet..."
Hanii smiled back and nodded. "Good. A man like Kazuya Mishima doesn't deserve to die. Not like this...he would have wanted to die in the heat of battle...a warrior's death."
In the darkness of the lab, from beneath the thick, cold glass, the face of a young Japanese man stared back out through closed eyes. A single scar resided on his cheek, but the rest of his features were flawless. The G-Corporation had almost done him justice...by using DNA collected from him before the first King Of IronFist Tournament, they'd tried to revert him back to a state of health...but the virus had got to him first. His body had been taken back to that of a twenty-five-year-old, but the damage had still been done.
But in the future, perhaps they would know how to undo the damage.
They had to, for the sake of his son.
For the sake of Japan.
For the sake of the world – of humanity.
***
"Damn this all to hell!"
The curse echoed loudly through the entire Abel-corporation laboratory. The fuming young man was comforted by a colleague, who he quickly brushed off.
"Fucking Mishima...he fucking well handed the fucking Zaibatsu to his fucking son! Fuck that Fucking fucker..."
A few people coughed. An older man muttered under his breath. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, was a gratuitous and generous use of the word fuck."
The man snarled right back at him, and resumed pacing. "We can't just let him ruin everything!"
Again, a few coughed; a woman took him silently by the elbow, and led him into another room.
On the way, he asked what the heck this was all about...the answer was silence.
Finally, they arrived in the testing lab. She pulled open a long, wide panel on the wall, revealing a stasis unit...
In a dark voice, she muttered back at the man; "Justice will be served."
Within the stasis unit, one might catch a glimpse, through the frost, of two twin peaks of jet black hair, and the stony visage of a middle-aged Japanese man...