SURRENDER by mentira
8.0 – One-way Ticket
Jin rose before the break of day the following morning. He hadn't slept once, as he feared he'd make the same mistake he made the last time. He didn't trust himself with Xiao. She was too…comfortable, he thought was the appropriate word. He'd gotten too cozy with her that night, allowed her effect over him to take hold, causing him to drop his inhibitions, toss worries to the winds and…simply enjoy being wrapped up in her warmth.
He couldn't afford to let that happen again.
He took care of the fire they'd used last night, taking the same precautions as he had before. He gathered Xiao, still sound asleep, into his arms, forcing himself to ignore the soft murmurs that emitted from her lips, the way her small, soft hands clutched at the hairs at the nape of his neck as he carried her over to the pickup truck and placed her gently into the passenger seat.
Today they would make an early start, he told himself as he crossed around the front of the pickup and climbed into the driver's seat. There would be no stops, no detours, no nothing—not until they safely made it to China.
He had no doubt the Tekkenshu were still searching hard for him. And, knowing Heihachi, there'd be no period of rest until they found and captured him, which meant that they had to be constantly on their toes. Jin even hated admitting to the fact that what happened yesterday even did. He'd been careless, not in his right mind. Again, something he blamed on Xiao.
He put the truck in reverse and carefully backed his way between the trees and out on to the main road. He'd have to steal another car, he thought absentmindedly. No doubt the Tekkenshu would be looking for this one. There was a town coming up at the next exit, he wasn't familiar with it, but he didn't plan on staying long enough for anyone to make note of his presence.
Once that was done, he'd have to think of a plan to get to China. There was no way they could take public transportation—that was simply out of the question. And he certainly couldn't just fly her there himself. He'd have to find another way.
Think, Kazama, think, he urged himself. But no ideas came to him. He'd never been this far east of Tokyo. The terrain was new to him. For now, all he could do was drive.
* * * * *
Miharu stood outside the door to Xiao's apartment. She'd neither seen nor heard anything from Xiao since Sunday. At first Miharu figured it was because Xiao was sick, but then she knew Xiao would've at least called her to get the work she'd missed for that day. So that led her to think that she was angry at her insistent prying back at the grocery store, but then there'd been no sign of life happening inside of her apartment as far as she could see.
She was beginning to get worried. What if something had happened to Xiao and she'd just been too stupid to realize it? What if she was so sick she couldn't move from her bed? Or what if she was injured and lying in pain on her bedroom floor? Or if she'd run away or been kidnapped? Or, even worse, dead?
Miharu shuddered at the last though. Now, Mi, you're taking this too far, she told herself, taking deep, calming breaths in an attempt to ease her frazzled nerves as she reached for the door handle. Raising her other hand, she knocked twice, gave a soft call of "Xiao", and then turned the handle, surprised to find that the door was unlocked.
"Xiao," she called out again as she stepped over the threshold.
The room was dark inside; all the blinds on the windows were pulled shut. Miharu felt along the wall, searching for the light switch. She found it and flicked it on, spilling light into the room.
Miharu gasped.
The apartment was a total disaster. In the kitchen, plates, dishes and silverware—everything had been dumped out of their drawer or cabinet and onto the floor. Even the decorative colored glass panes on the cabinets' doors had been smashed. And in the living dining rooms there were cushions strewn across the carpet, furniture turned upside down, picture frames, books and magazines shattered and torn on the floor.
When she ran down the hall and checked the bedroom and bathroom, she found them both in the same state as the other rooms. Miharu would be a damned fool not to realize what had happened here: someone had broken in.
Some things confused her, though. There was no hint of any actual "breaking in". The door was unlocked, which could only mean one thing, as she knew Xiao to be very careful about keeping her doors locked, whoever did it had picked the lock. It'd make sense in a large apartment building like this. The robber or whoever it was knew that an actual break in would cause too much noise in these narrow, little hallways.
What confused her even more than that, however, was that there was no apparent sign of a struggle. Miharu knew Xiao would never have gone without a fight. There were no torn clothes, no stains of blood, no hints that Xiao might've fought for her life before this person…
Cold fear swept through her body. What did this person do to her?
Running over to Xiao's phone hanging from the kitchen wall, Miharu picked up the receiver and called the city police.
* * * * *
It wasn't until quarter of eight when Xiao finally roused, with the wind coming in through the car window, tickling strands of hair across face, chilling her skin through the light pair of jeans and T-shirt she was wearing, making her wish she had a nice pair of warm clothes to change into. Though she was technically awake, she snuggled back into her seat's cushions, hoping to catch the last remnants of sleep before they slipped away for good.
There was something different about the vehicle, however, that distracted her from falling back asleep. It felt different, more…closer to the ground. With her head against the car's interior frame, she could hear the wind pushing around its exterior, the tires rolling along the pavement, could feel it grinding into the tire's grooves.
Suddenly she was transported somewhere else, to another time, another place—another life. She was sixteen again, an innocent youth only in her junior year of high school, yet to be affected by the rules of the world, not yet broken and scarred by the sharp dagger of heartbreak.
She was riding on the back of a motorcycle, her bare legs straddling the leather seat, the rumble of the powerful engine reverberating between them. Her arms wrapped tightly around a slender, but muscular waist, her face pressed close to the space set between the shoulder blades of his back, watching with wide, fearful eyes as the world sped past her. And the wind whistled through her hair, making the raven tresses fly about like the beating wings of a black crow soaring through the air.
And the man steering the motorcycle was none other than Jin. With his back set straight, his hands tightly clasped around the handle bars, his feet braced on either side of the motorcycle's body, he raced across the earth, circling round and round his grandfather's estate, kicking up clumps of grass and spraying handfuls of dirt. With his heart beating furiously, loud and fast like a stampede of wild stallions galloping across the open prairie.
She'd been scared, terrified even, of the fast, roaring intensity of the motorcycle—secretly relishing every breathtaking minute of it—but it'd been worth it. It had been during one of these moments that she'd first discovered her feelings for Jin. For as she was riding with him, clinging to the back of him like a starfish to the side of a rock, fearful of the incoming tide that might sweep him off to sea, peering at his profile through the mess of ebony hair that whipped about his head as he rode, it was then that she could experience Jin being truly at ease.
She'd never realized, until then, how beautiful he looked when he let down all his inhibitions, when he cast aside all his fears and worries and decided to live for the moment, forgetting all else and taking pleasure in it. She rarely ever saw that look on him…
Xiao snapped her eyes open, angrily pushing the unwanted memory out of her mind. She sat up in her seat, fighting with the seatbelt as it threatened to strangle her as she did so, but then stopped short when she noticed something.
Her earlier suspicions had been correct: they were no longer in the truck. They were in what appeared to be a Nissan Sentra XE. She turned to Jin, who was sitting in the driver's seat staring out the windshield with a look of extreme concentration on his face, though she sensed his line concentration lay elsewhere, and not on the road.
"Jin," she said, "what happened to the—?"
"We had to ditch the truck," he interrupted her before she could even finish her question. "Those men saw us in it back at the diner. We needed to throw them off."
Xiao nodded her head in understanding. "Where'd you get this?"
"I borrowed it from an old man back at a gas station some exits back," he said, gesturing with his thumb behind him.
"Where are we?"
"We passed an exit for Ogaki City not too long ago."
She nodded again, the sound of civilization awakening the hunger within her stomach. Xiao turned her head to face the window, embarrassed and refusing to meet Jin's eyes.
"Look in the glove compartment," Jin said. "There's some food there, but it's not much."
Xiao looked at him, confused. Doing as he told her, she pulled open the glove compartment, and food spilled out into her lap. There were pre-packaged pastries, fruits, a loaf of bread and bottles of water.
"What…?" she gasped, shocked and in awe at what she was seeing. "Where? How—?"
"Picked up a few things while I was at the gas station," Jin replied dully, shrugging his shoulders as if it meant nothing to him.
Xiao blinked. "You didn't…"
"The place was small so they didn't have much selection, but this should be fine, I think."
"Jin—"
"It's either this or we don't eat anything for a long, long time."
Xiao snapped her mouth shut. Picking out an orange and a bottle of water, she put the rest back and sank back into her sit. Silently she began peeling the orange, her eyes focusing on the touch skin, though her mind strayed elsewhere.
Jin's attitude was nothing short of being reckless, in her opinion, much like how he was with that damned motorcycle. He hadn't been allowed to have it, she remembered. Heihachi knew well that Jin would run wild with it, cutting up their lawn and tearing across the city at full-speed. Disregarding all the rules…it was disturbingly…sexy.
"You left your motorcycle behind, you know," she said—and then bit down on her lip once she realized what she'd said.
"What?" he said.
"When you left—after the third tournament—you didn't take your motorcycle with you."
Jin turned to look at her, frowning. "What's this all of a sudden?" he asked.
"You used to love that thing," she explained. "You rode it everywhere. It would've been one of the first things I would've expected you to take with you, that's all."
"I hadn't planned on leaving when I did," he said quietly.
"But the second time you did?" she said, her tone suddenly bitter, her temper rising.
"I didn't have a choice."
Stop. Stop now, she told herself. Please, just one day of no arguing with him. "I-I just don't understand," she whispered.
"I'm sorry," was all he said.
Xiao, now with the peel completely removed from her orange, broke off a piece and ate it. "Where are we heading?"
"Not sure," Jin replied. "We have to think of a way to get out of here."
Xiao took a sip from her water bottle. "Okay. Where are we again?"
"Just outside of Ogaki."
"Ogaki…Ogaki…" For some reason the name sounded familiar to her. Her friends and her had taken a road trip last year out this way to visit one of their relatives who owned a large mansion with an outdoor pool and sauna during summer break.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, suddenly realizing something.
"What?" Jin asked.
She explained her situation to him. "There's a city—Himeji City, I believe it was—we had to go through it to get to Jue's grandmother's house, and I remember seeing an old hanger and runway—"
"No way," Jin said automatically. "That's out of the question—"
"No, no, wait! It was a small hanger. Like, uh, for those little private planes, you know? I think it was closed. I bet it just houses old planes that they don't use anymore, you know?"
She could see the gears functioning in Jin's head. "You're sure it's closed?"
"Pretty sure. There was no one around. It looked abandoned, like it hadn't been used in a while."
Jin nodded, she could see a sign of hope rising in his features. "All right. Then that's our ticket out."
* * * * *
"Anything?" Kazuya asked Heihachi's—pretty damned well as good as his, too—men as they entered the office.
"No, sir," one of the men replied, and Kazuya was more than glad to hear it addressed to him. "Nothing more than what we found in her bags in that truck from the diner."
"Are you sure?" Kazuya asked, his voice descending lower, sounding more threatening. He stepped closer to the smaller man. "Did you check the whole apartment?"
The man stepped back, clearly intimidated by his new charge. "Yes, sir, we did. Kazama—I mean, your son did well not to leave anything behind, sir."
"Well, then that leaves us with nothing then, doesn't it?"
"What do you propose we do now, Kazuya?" Heihachi asked, who was sitting in his big, leather chair behind his desk, his fingers laced beneath his chin as his elbows rested on the flat top.
"Chill out, old man," Kazuya said. "We keep looking, that's all. Nothing we can do 'til we find him."
"Hmph," Heiachi huffed smugly, giving the younger man a look of unclouded doubt.
"And I'll go with you this time," Kazuya said. "Speed up the process. You guys aren't getting shit done on your own."
"My men are highly trained professionals," Heihachi said defensively, taking Kazuya by surprise. He hardly seemed the type to stick up for his men, although since it was he who was putting them down, he figured that was one thing more he'd have to protect from his only son. "What can you possibly do that my men can't?"
Kazuya smirked, unfazed. "Don't forget who you're talking to, Dad," he said, his eyes flaring blood-red as energy pulsed through his veins with the thought of a chase beckoning at the heels of his feet—or the downy tips of his feathered wings.
Heihachi's eyes widened, and Kazuya laughed in mirth, taking complete pleasure in seeing the terror on his father's face.
"I took your men down one to at least a hundred at one point," he continued arrogantly, not pausing for an instant. "They weren't the ones who found me, I found you. I'm the one who's been through hell and back, and still running strong like I hadn't even been thrown into the mouth of a volcano."
I'm the Devil himself, you bastard, and there's nothing that compares to that. Nothing.
