SURRENDER by mentira

A Note From mentira: I'mmmmm baaaaaaaack! Bet y'all thought I was dead, huh? Gosh, it's been an awfully long time. To tell you the truth, I honestly wasn't sure I'd be able to pick this back up again. A huge thanks goes out to Melancholy Doll, who was my much needed "oomph" to get me back on this project, and to my brother, who helped me work out the technical difficulties for this story (a little alteration was made in the previous chapter, but nothing huge. You'd undoubtedly be able to pick up what I changed simply from reading this one). Not much for a comeback, I'll admit, but at least it's something. Hopefully I'll really get back into the swing of things real soon. Enjoy!

9.0 – Confrontation

By the time Jin and Xiao reached the supposed abandoned hanger and runway, it was almost one o' clock. From what he could see, she'd been right. The hanger itself was dark from the inside, but with the early afternoon sunlight shining through its windows, she could make out a few of the places housed in it. There were no vehicles parked anywhere near the building, and the runway was clear.

Jin parked the car behind the hanger, out of sight from the dirt road they'd come from. He shut the car off and took the keys out of the ignition, but didn't move to get out of the car.

"What's wrong?" Xiao asked.

"It's too early," Jin replied. "If this hanger hasn't been used in a while, like you said, it'll look suspicious for a plane to be leaving from this area, don't you think?"

Xiao hesitated for a moment, thinking it over. "Yeah, I suppose so. But don't we want to get a move on now? I mean, the sooner we leave the better, right?"

Jin nodded. "Yes, but we should wait 'til dark. It'll be safer that way."

"So…what're we gonna do until then?"

Jin glanced over at the building. They'd need to find a way inside to get at one of the planes. "Let's go check it out," he said.

"O-Okay."

They both got out of the car and started heading for the hanger.

"Um, Jin?" Xiao asked timidly.

"What?"

"Have you ever flown a plane before?"

"Nope."

"Uh, well I haven't either, so… How exactly are we gonna do this?"

Jin glanced over at Xiao, a smirk playing on his lips. "We'll just have to learn by ourselves then, won't we?"

* * * * *

"Now, Miss…"

"Miharu."

"Miss Miharu—"

"No. Just Miharu."

"All right. Miharu, are you certain that your friend is missing?"

"Yes!" Miharu exclaimed exasperatedly at the police officer. She was standing in the kitchen of Xiao's apartment, talking with Officer…Wulong, was it? She couldn't remember, though she had the strangest feeling of familiarity about him.

He was a tall Asian man, though she could tell he was Chinese. He had dark skin, overly tanned from being outside in the sun so often, aged and wrinkled, especially around his eyes. His slick black hair fell way past his shoulders, its long strands pulled back into a messy ponytail, with shorter, uneven strands falling around his face—an unusual, yet disturbingly attractive look for a police officer.

"And you claim that it was these men who supposedly broke into her house that kidnapped her?"

"That's what I said, wasn't it? And what do you mean 'supposedly'? She was kidnapped."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm just trying to keep an open mind here. Neither you nor anyone else in this building witnessed this incident taking place."

"I realize that, officer. But what else could have happened? I don't hear from her for a whole day—which, mind you, is very unlike us—and then I come in here to find her home completely trashed. What does that tell me?"

"All right, all right. But you said that she was mad at you from a previous argument you had—"

"There was no argument. I was just a little…unreasonable about something."

"Forgive me, my mistake. Regardless, there's also the possible scenario that she simply left you without informing you."

"What!? That's absurd! Xiao would never do that."

"I don't mean to offend you, miss. It's just that kidnapping is a very serious offense, and we don't want to make the mistake of jumping to conclusions when nothing of the sort really happened."

Miharu growled, frustrated. How dare this man…act the way he was! Her best friend was missing and he was accusing her of jumping at shadows. "I'll tell you what happened, mister," she said, poking him in the chest with her index finger, "Someone broke into her house in the middle of the night—quite stealthily too, I might add—kidnapped Xiao, trashed her apartment and split!"

Officer Wulong blinked his dark eyes down at her, apparently taken back. "O-Okay," he stammered. "If you're certain…"

"I am certain. I'm damned certain." She poked him in the chest each time she emphasized a word. "Now I want you and your other cop buddies to get your asses out there and start looking!"

When Miharu had finished her little rant and calmed down, she realized how pushy was being. Embarrassed, she cleared her throat, stepping back, and looked the officer calmly in the eyes. "Please?"

Officer Wulong nodded his head, though his still wore the surprised, yet amazed, expression on his face. "Yes, Miss Miharu. Right away."

"That's Miharu. Just plain Miharu."

* * * * *

It was hard to hear anything over the incessant chopping of the helicopter's propellers slicing through the air as they flew over Japan. Kazuya sat in the co-pilot's seat, four other Tekkenshu sitting around him, one directing the flying aircraft. He was scanning the area down below, searching for his illegitimate son, though he knew this tactic of searching was pointless.

Jin Kazama was a smart man, too smart for his own good, as far as Kazuya was concerned. He hadn't a doubt that they'd switched vehicles by now, so as to throw them off their track, and they certainly wouldn't be staying anywhere out in the open.

No, Kazuya was more or less here for thought. He found he could always think better when suspended hundreds of feet into the air rather than on solid ground. Think, Mishima, he urged himself. Where would Jin hide?

As it was, Heihachi's Tekkenshu were combing the country in search for him, searching every town, city and island they could get to. Of course, Jin would know of this, so he'd be extra careful. He didn't hold Jin's little slip-up to his own credibility—he'd had what Heihachi referred to as "that little spitfire" with him. A passenger to his travels could only complicate matters further, and, if anything, she'd only slow him down.

This…spitfire—Xiao was her name. He definitely hoped she was what Heihachi made her out to be; she could be used as a valuable tool on Jin. Taking that into consideration, Kazuya realized that Jin would be trying to get out of the country fast, and to do that, he'd either have to travel by boat or plane, as he hadn't a doubt that his little girlfriend was unaware of her lover's secret. He'd take his shadows to the grave if it meant keeping his loved ones safe.

Kazuya frowned, pondering over this information. Boats moved too slowly for a successful escape, so that would leave…

Suddenly, he was struck with a strange and intense feeling. It felt like a deep brand being scorched into the core of his essence, one that burned and sprouted steaming coils from the wound to stretch throughout his entire being. He could feel the flames igniting, the red flare in his eyes flickering to life. And it was then, at that precise moment, that he knew exactly where Jin was.

* * * * *

Xiao let out a startled yelp as she watched Jin's fist make contact with the sheet of glass inserted in one of the windows of the hanger they were currently breaking into. A loud shattering pierced the quiet atmosphere, echoing momentarily in the distance surrounding them as shards of broken glass rained down from the source of the impact before triggering the security alarm from inside.

Before Xiao had time to much less react, Jin had already holstered himself up through the frame of the window he'd just smashed, using his feet to climb up the side of the concrete wall, and leapt down onto the other side. Xiao craned her neck, straining to see where he'd went, but to no avail.

Moments later, the screams of the alarm came to a halt, and Xiao found herself checking around and behind her, as though fearful someone might have heard or seen them. But there was nothing. The hanger was in a pretty remote area. It was still considered a part of the city, but was far enough away from rest of civilization that no one could have heard it.

"Something wrong?"

Xiao jumped. Whirling around, she came to find Jin in the window once again, peering down at her. "No," she with feigned certainly.

Jin reached out through the frame. "Coming?" he asked.

Xiao went to reach for his hand, but stopped short when she caught sight of dark rivulets of blood leaking down the back of his right hand, the wounded flesh red and tender with several cuts. "Oh my word," she gasped, standing on tiptoe to grasp his injured hand in her own. He neither flinched nor made any sound of pain as she gently touched the area close to the cuts. "Jin, are you crazy? What do you think you're doing, hurting yourself like that?"

"I'm fine," he replied, removing his hand from hers. He wiped at the blood, smearing it on the side of his dark jacket, and, to her surprise, no more blood seeped from the cuts. "Come on," he said, reaching for her again. "I'll pull you up."

Xiao hesitated, gingerly slipping her small hands into his own. Jin lightly squeezed them, letting her know that it was all right, and began pulling her up. Xiao used her feet against the wall, pushing herself upward, while Jin concentrated on moving her over the bits of shard glass that still stuck out from the window frame.

"Careful," he grunted, once she was halfway in. Her arms were supporting herself by his shoulders, as Jin, whom she now noticed was standing on a few stacked crates, grabbed her legs and guided them through.

Xiao's foot slipped as she tried to get her balance on the sill, but Jin caught her before she could fall, and, holding her in his arms, jumped down onto the sturdy floor of the hanger.

"All right," Jin said as he let her down on the floor, "back to business."

There were four planes housed in this hanger. Jin instructed her to take the one closest to them, while he made his way over to the garage doors. Xiao obeyed without hesitation, choosing the biplane directly in front of her, climbing inside and taking the co-pilot's seat.

From inside, she watched patiently as Jin activated an electric panel on the wall near the garage doors, which opened the first one in front of their plane. He then came to join her, taking the pilot's seat beside her.

They sat silently for a long moment, Xiao studying Jin's profile, while his gaze seemed fixated on the plane's controls, though she had the suspicion that he wasn't actually focusing at the controls, but rather his own thoughts.

Suddenly a strange expression befell him. His gaze hardened slightly, switching from mere distant thought to intense concentration. She saw the muscles in his jaw tighten, the column of his throat fall into stillness. And it was then she realized that he was listening for something. She was just about to ask him what was wrong, when he himself broke the silence, shaking his head, as though shaking the remnants of dream from his memory, and said, "All right, I want you to pay close attention to what I do. In case anything should happen, I want you to be able to take over."

Xiao's eyes widened. Had she heard him right? "W-What?" she stammered. "I thought you said you'd never flown a plane before."

"I haven't."

"Then how the hell are you going to show me how it's done?" she demanded.

Jin looked at her then, a serious, yet understanding look upon his face. "Heihachi has his own private planes. When I was young, I used to be obsessed with them. My mother would let me go to work with him sometimes, and, with Heihachi's consent, let me spend time with his pilots. They'd take me to see the planes, and they even taught me how they run."

"But…"

"What did you expect when you'd suggested the idea?" he asked. "That we'd sit around and read the manual first?"

Xiao blushed, but didn't answer.

"This is the only chance we've got, Xiao." His tone was firm, but yet there was no forcefulness to it. Xiao knew he would back down if she were to ask him to. She knew he'd even do it without argument. But she also knew that he was right. Somehow, someway, though she had no idea what real kind of mess he was in, she knew this was his only escape.

Inhaling a deep, shaky breath, Xiao said, "Okay. I'm ready."

"Okay."

* * * * *

Jin's hands wouldn't stop shaking as he worked them over the flight controls of their biplane. No matter how he tried, he could not get them to remain steady. He could feel the cold clamminess sweating on his fingertips, making it difficult to press certain buttons or to grasp on to switches or levers. He muttered several curses, stricken by his clumsiness rather than frustrated.

It wasn't nervousness that made his hands fumble, but fear. Cold, uncertain fear. Not fear of the plane, or of flying. Oh, no. It was something entirely separate from that.

No, the source of his fear had come to him in an image. A haunting image of a short moment's time ago that seemed so solid, so real that it was almost tangible.

A man, dressed in a tasteful suit, the jacket unbuttoned in the front, revealing a half-opened shirt, was walking towards him, his hands stuffed in his pants' pockets. He started off small at first, miniscule, like a small plastic figure without the facial features painted on, save for a small splotch of deep red that had dripped onto the center right of his face, where Jin guessed an eye would be. And he could hear sharp, purposeful footsteps piercing the death-like quite of his vision, the irritating tap of a shoe's heel against a hard floor surface, unfitting to an object so small.

In slow time, however, the figure began to grow. Slowly, fluidly, as though it were a distant object gradually coming into focus. And it was then that Jin realized it wasn't red paint that marred the figure's face.

It was a glowing light.

He breath caught in his throat then, a painful blockage of air as realization dawned on him that this was no plastic toy or object, but a monster in the living flesh.

Kazuya.

Jin.

The sound of his name echoed within the recesses of his mind. A deep, rumbling echo of a voice that he didn't recognize as his own. It was Kazuya's.

Jin…Jin, you worthless, troublesome fool. I'm coming for you. You'd better not run when I find you. I'm coming for you…

A dream. It had to be a dream. There was no other explanation for it.

But Kazuya's voice still echoed off the walls of his skull, loud and clear, like he'd been right there, speaking directly to him. And his image… If he closed his eyes now, he knew Kazuya would be waiting right there behind his lids.

"Jin?" Xiao's soft, concerned voice broke him out of his thoughts. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, though his eyes darted back and forth, scanning the interior of the hanger, what part of the runway he could see past the garage doors.

Her small hand touched the back of his. "Your hands are shaking."

"Nerves," he lied. He looked over at her, giving her what he hoped was a convincing look of embarrassment. "I've never actually done this before, you know."

Her dark eyes were serious when they met his. "I trust you," she said without hesitation.

Swallowing hard, he forced himself to turn back to the task at hand. Clearing all thoughts except those concerning their plane, he began making the necessary sequences to get this contraption running.

He heard Xiao's soft gasp when the engine roared to life, and again when the propellers kicked in. Jin focused on the controls, grabbing hold of the stick and pushing it lightly forward, while at the same time pressing down on the pedals to taxi the aircraft out onto the runway.

"Buckle up," Jin warned her as they approached the garage doors. He heard the faint swoosh of leather, the metallic click of the seatbelt clasping into place.

They were just passing through the doors when something moved out from somewhere to the side, stepping out about twenty feet in front of them. Jin immediately released the pedals and the flight stick, bringing the plane to a slow halt, until they were just before whatever had interrupted their path.

Beside him, Xiao leaned forward in her seat, trying to peer over the plane's front to see what it was. "Jin," she said, confusion evident in her voice. "What is it?"

Jin didn't answer at first. He'd seen straightaway what is was—or rather, who it was. It was his worst nightmare come true.

"Kazuya."