DISCLAIMER: Namco owns Jin Kazama, Ling Xiaoyu and all other characters
associated with Tekken. I am just toying with them, and intend no offence.
C h a p t e r O n e
Ling's eyes fluttered open, and she winced in pain. Her body ached from head to toe, and she knew it wasn't from the rigours of the tournament. Her legs were numb, sizzling with pins and needles, but in attempting to roll over she encountered a heavy weight pinning her to the ground.
"Ugh, Jin..." she mumbled, shoving him roughly but unable to move him from his current crushing position.
"Jin!" She moaned, giving him a gentle slap on the cheek in an attempt to wake him.
His head suddenly snapped up, his eyes wide open, and for a moment they buzzed wildly in confusion. Then he looked down at her, and she raised her eyebrows at him emphatically, trying to gesture to her trapped legs. In an instant he leapt to his feet, with a hiss at the pain in his muscles, and then held out a hand to help her up. She took it gratefully and was unceremoniously dragged to her feet.
"You okay?" He said absently, surveying the surroundings with a preternatural instinct.
She nodded her head vaguely, also looking around to see what situation they were in, or any indication of who had sent the punishing blue bubble to capture Jin.
Strangely, it seemed as though they had not moved an inch. The beach was still bathed in dark blue tones, the waters still rippled in shallow waves, the sand was still holding the hot day's warmth beneath her bare feet. At some point she had dropped her shoes, but looking around, she could not find them.
She looked up at the stars, half expecting them to have disappeared. But Orion's belt – the only one she knew – was hovering just above the horizon as it had always done. As far as she could tell, nothing but a big bunch of pain had happened. They were still on the same beach. She frowned and looked towards her companion for answers.
Then she noticed something over his shoulder. Or rather nothing, which was strange. There was supposed to be a pier there, dazzling with flickering lights, drifting melodies out across the bay. But the pier had disappeared, and in its place there was nothing, just the continuous beach stretching off as far as she could see. An eerie feeling of unease settled on her as she followed the line of where the pier should have been, hoping her suspicions were wrong, and found another load of nothing.
The mountain was still there, looming over the beach with majesty as it had done for thousands of years. But where street lamps and cosy living room lights usually lit its slopes, there was darkness. She could just make out a thick forest climbing up the rocky gradients, but nothing else. The city had poofed into thin air, by the looks of it. The beach suddenly felt very black, spooky, and silent. Too silent.
She grabbed Jin's arm and pointed to the mountain. He took a step forward, peering closer as though the city would suddenly reappear before his eyes. Ling eventually got impatient.
"There's supposed to be a city there, isn't there?!" She said in a shrill voice, unable to disguise the rising panic, "I mean, I don't know about you, but I can distinctly remember a city being right on that mountainside. And a pier over there," she jabbed her finger to where the pier used to be, "And my sandals!" She finished with a wail, pointing to the sand where her shoes were depressingly absent.
"Me too," Jin said quietly.
"Me too what?" She quizzed, her mind in a flurry.
"I remember a city being there too," he clarified.
Taking another couple of steps forward, Jin stopped and his shoulders slumped. Ling pushed herself across the soft white sand with her bare feet, shaking her legs occassionally to rid the grains from her tracksuit bottoms. Stopping beside him, she looked up expectantly at his shadowy features, hidden inside his jacket. He seemed spookily unaffected by this turn of events, and it annoyed her.
"So?" She said, hoping to prompt him into action. He said nothing in reply.
She sighed and scuffed at the white beach with her foot.
"Just let me think," he said in a slow, guarded tone of voice.
"Think quicker," she grumbled.
She attempted a stretch to ease her muscles, but every joint seemed to crunch at once, and she crippled over with a grunt of annoyance and a hiss of pain. She was stiff as hell, and the cold night air was beginning to bite at her skin. And she had no footwear. No footwear! Jin flicked his eyes towards her in a brief effort at sympathy, and proceeded to sigh deeply, as if finally he was resolving to speak. Her ears perked up in hope.
"I think we should walk," he said carefully.
"Walk where?" She asked, her heart sinking.
"To the first sign of civilization we see," he explained.
She cast around for an argument, frightened for her poor bare feet. Sand was okay, but sticks and stones?
"What if we go in the wrong direction?" She asked petulantly, fighting the temptation to pout.
Jin gave her one of his serious, no-foolishness-tolerated looks, and then began walking towards the mountain with a determined stride, leaving her standing alone. She mouthed uselessly at him, and took a longing look over the shore, hoping to see a pair of shoes sticking out of the sand in the distance. No such luck.
With a heavy shake of her head, she picked her way across the grainy beach after him.
"Jin-Jin?" She cooed sweetly, to where he was progressing towards the stony edge of the beach.
"Yes?" He called back.
"What size shoe are you?" She asked in what she thought might be an innocent tone.
"I'd rather carry you," he said simply, and continued.
Ling narrowed her eyes, shot a few mental daggers at his back, and stumbled and tripped her way after him.
* * *
The worn footpath they found was steep and wooded, and a hundred thousand leafy trees seemed to tower over the two of them. Ling felt as though they would be trapped on this eternal, endless route upwards for the rest of their lives, never reaching an end, unable to go back down. Jin trod the path up ahead with square determination. He was sure that this pointless route would take them somewhere. Though she gritted her teeth and tried to keep up with him, she started to lag behind after only a few minutes. It wasn't that she was unfit – far from it – but her feet hurt.
"I *am* trying not to be annoying," she said, "But my feet really hurt. Can we stop for a minute?"
Jin obediently stopped dead still and waited for her to catch up. He didn't look annoyed or impatient. He was blank, his expression unreadable. How did he manage to do that? She wondered absently.
"Not that there isn't a good view from up here," she said, then frowned, "Or at least there would be if I could see a damn thing, but are you sure this path is leading us somewhere? Maybe we should go back down. You never know – the bubble thing might come back, and if we jumped into it then the city and my sandals would come back, and we wouldn't want to miss that would we?"
"I don't think it sent the city away," he replied quietly. He was looking around for something.
"What do you mean?" She asked, "There's no city here. Unless you see something I don't, but you already said you didn't, so I'm assuming we see the same things, which means it sent the city away!"
Jin walked off a bit and sat down on a fallen log. Relieved, Ling hobbled over and joined him. He began taking his shoes off. Her eyes lit up.
"Oh Jin! I knew you cared," she said happily.
"I meant that I think the bubble sent *us* away," he continued.
She held out her hands to receive the shoes, but instead he handed her his socks. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Jin, I'm not holding your socks," she pointed out.
"They're for you to wear," he explained.
She looked at the socks, dirty and sweaty, and frowned incredulously. "You can't be serious?"
He looked at her, seriously.
"But – Eeuw!" She shrank away from them.
"Look at your feet," he said. She peered down at her feet. They throbbed from the battle with the hill. There was a trickle of dried blood between her toes where she had cut it on a stone, and they were covered with dust and dried mud.
"Besides," Jin carried on, "My shoes would be too big and you'd fall off the mountain and die."
"Okay, okay," she muttered, snatching the socks away while he put his shoes back on, "Drama queen."
"What?"
"So you think the bubble sent us away?" She questioned, wriggling her toes inside the socks.
Jin nodded his head, deep in thought, and then stood up and started walking up the hill again. Taking his socks for an initial test drive, Ling had to admit it was better than before.
So they continued on up the mountainside. The moon eventually disappeared from view as the trees came to a pinnacle overhead, and it grew quite black. Ling made more of an effort to keep up with Jin, and desolately wondered where the bubble had sent them. It had looked like the same beach, true, but there was so much shore in Japan that it could have been different. She couldn't really remember. Her feet were still aching.
A rustle in the undergrowth tore her attention back to the outside world, and she peered suspiciously at the trees. Her companion turned his head too, but did not stop walking. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. If anyone was waiting to ambush them, they wouldn't stand a chance. Her Hakke Sho and Hika Ken had improved greatly over the tournament, and she knew Jin was as wired as he had always been. Just let the attackers come.
But nothing emerged from the bushy trees, and they carried on cracking and shaking in the high mountain wind. The sounds of twigs snapping as they hit against other twigs, small animals scurrying about their furry business and tree trunks creaking in their constant battle up the hillside were all the comfort they had.
She looked up, hopeful of seeing the stars, but the sight of closed leaves prevented her from doing so. This sucked. It was so dark now, she couldn't even see Jin in front of her, but the sound of his heavy footsteps alerted her to his presence. As soon as they vanished, she would start worrying. It was a silly thought, but after a whole city disappearing before her very eyes, she wasn't going to get complacent.
"So, Jin, how's this for travelling?" She said cutely into the darkness, weary of the silence that had descended between them.
She received a grunt for her troubles, and imagined him shrugging his shoulders in accompaniment.
"This would be a nice place for a theme park," she mused, imagining a roller coaster winding up the hillside, little souvenir shops tucked underneath its steely heights.
No answer. Just footsteps.
"Yeah, I can see it now," she carried on, "Roller coaster here, rapids over there, big old merry go round down there. There'd be people in little panda outfits doing the entertainment, and balloons floating off into the distance. I'm make them floaty so that when the little kids let go, they wouldn't be able to get them back, and they would cry so much that their parents have to buy them another one. More money for me," she giggled.
Still nothing.
She narrowed her eyes in determination. "And you could have your very own show, demonstrating karate to fat fathers and ambitious kids and drooling mothers. You'd make me rich!"
"What?" She heard a disbelieving voice from way up ahead. She hadn't realised she'd got so far behind. She hurried to catch up.
"You know you'd enjoy it," she teased.
"Xiao, I'm not doing that," he said firmly, "Not in a million years."
"Ah, Mr Grumpy," she grinned surreptitiously, "I think you'd be good at it."
"Don't even..."
Jin trailed off and she bumped into his back. She let out a muffled exclaimation and dodged around him. Something new could be seen up ahead.
There was a clearing, and there were lights. She started in excitement, and then a frown creased her features as they both took a few cautious steps towards the clearing.
The lights were lanterns, hanging outside wooden buildings. It was the tiniest little settlement, nestled into the mountain like a baby cuddled to it's mother. The buildings were clustered around what looked like a market, dead and lifeless like the night, and not a soul could be seen wandering about. Then, further up, she noticed a building. It was a beautiful Kansai palace.
A low mist hung about the ground, and the faint rush of a waterfall could be heard from up ahead. Searching the buildings for any sign of life, she saw none. But her jaw dropped in surprise at some horses stabled by the side of what looked to be a cottage.
She put a hand on Jin's shoulder in alarm, trying to stop herself from shaking. She said the first thing that came into her mind.
"Okay, Jin, I never really listened in history at school," she stammered, "But this looks like, well, *it*."
* * *
Hope you liked. Please review!
C h a p t e r O n e
Ling's eyes fluttered open, and she winced in pain. Her body ached from head to toe, and she knew it wasn't from the rigours of the tournament. Her legs were numb, sizzling with pins and needles, but in attempting to roll over she encountered a heavy weight pinning her to the ground.
"Ugh, Jin..." she mumbled, shoving him roughly but unable to move him from his current crushing position.
"Jin!" She moaned, giving him a gentle slap on the cheek in an attempt to wake him.
His head suddenly snapped up, his eyes wide open, and for a moment they buzzed wildly in confusion. Then he looked down at her, and she raised her eyebrows at him emphatically, trying to gesture to her trapped legs. In an instant he leapt to his feet, with a hiss at the pain in his muscles, and then held out a hand to help her up. She took it gratefully and was unceremoniously dragged to her feet.
"You okay?" He said absently, surveying the surroundings with a preternatural instinct.
She nodded her head vaguely, also looking around to see what situation they were in, or any indication of who had sent the punishing blue bubble to capture Jin.
Strangely, it seemed as though they had not moved an inch. The beach was still bathed in dark blue tones, the waters still rippled in shallow waves, the sand was still holding the hot day's warmth beneath her bare feet. At some point she had dropped her shoes, but looking around, she could not find them.
She looked up at the stars, half expecting them to have disappeared. But Orion's belt – the only one she knew – was hovering just above the horizon as it had always done. As far as she could tell, nothing but a big bunch of pain had happened. They were still on the same beach. She frowned and looked towards her companion for answers.
Then she noticed something over his shoulder. Or rather nothing, which was strange. There was supposed to be a pier there, dazzling with flickering lights, drifting melodies out across the bay. But the pier had disappeared, and in its place there was nothing, just the continuous beach stretching off as far as she could see. An eerie feeling of unease settled on her as she followed the line of where the pier should have been, hoping her suspicions were wrong, and found another load of nothing.
The mountain was still there, looming over the beach with majesty as it had done for thousands of years. But where street lamps and cosy living room lights usually lit its slopes, there was darkness. She could just make out a thick forest climbing up the rocky gradients, but nothing else. The city had poofed into thin air, by the looks of it. The beach suddenly felt very black, spooky, and silent. Too silent.
She grabbed Jin's arm and pointed to the mountain. He took a step forward, peering closer as though the city would suddenly reappear before his eyes. Ling eventually got impatient.
"There's supposed to be a city there, isn't there?!" She said in a shrill voice, unable to disguise the rising panic, "I mean, I don't know about you, but I can distinctly remember a city being right on that mountainside. And a pier over there," she jabbed her finger to where the pier used to be, "And my sandals!" She finished with a wail, pointing to the sand where her shoes were depressingly absent.
"Me too," Jin said quietly.
"Me too what?" She quizzed, her mind in a flurry.
"I remember a city being there too," he clarified.
Taking another couple of steps forward, Jin stopped and his shoulders slumped. Ling pushed herself across the soft white sand with her bare feet, shaking her legs occassionally to rid the grains from her tracksuit bottoms. Stopping beside him, she looked up expectantly at his shadowy features, hidden inside his jacket. He seemed spookily unaffected by this turn of events, and it annoyed her.
"So?" She said, hoping to prompt him into action. He said nothing in reply.
She sighed and scuffed at the white beach with her foot.
"Just let me think," he said in a slow, guarded tone of voice.
"Think quicker," she grumbled.
She attempted a stretch to ease her muscles, but every joint seemed to crunch at once, and she crippled over with a grunt of annoyance and a hiss of pain. She was stiff as hell, and the cold night air was beginning to bite at her skin. And she had no footwear. No footwear! Jin flicked his eyes towards her in a brief effort at sympathy, and proceeded to sigh deeply, as if finally he was resolving to speak. Her ears perked up in hope.
"I think we should walk," he said carefully.
"Walk where?" She asked, her heart sinking.
"To the first sign of civilization we see," he explained.
She cast around for an argument, frightened for her poor bare feet. Sand was okay, but sticks and stones?
"What if we go in the wrong direction?" She asked petulantly, fighting the temptation to pout.
Jin gave her one of his serious, no-foolishness-tolerated looks, and then began walking towards the mountain with a determined stride, leaving her standing alone. She mouthed uselessly at him, and took a longing look over the shore, hoping to see a pair of shoes sticking out of the sand in the distance. No such luck.
With a heavy shake of her head, she picked her way across the grainy beach after him.
"Jin-Jin?" She cooed sweetly, to where he was progressing towards the stony edge of the beach.
"Yes?" He called back.
"What size shoe are you?" She asked in what she thought might be an innocent tone.
"I'd rather carry you," he said simply, and continued.
Ling narrowed her eyes, shot a few mental daggers at his back, and stumbled and tripped her way after him.
* * *
The worn footpath they found was steep and wooded, and a hundred thousand leafy trees seemed to tower over the two of them. Ling felt as though they would be trapped on this eternal, endless route upwards for the rest of their lives, never reaching an end, unable to go back down. Jin trod the path up ahead with square determination. He was sure that this pointless route would take them somewhere. Though she gritted her teeth and tried to keep up with him, she started to lag behind after only a few minutes. It wasn't that she was unfit – far from it – but her feet hurt.
"I *am* trying not to be annoying," she said, "But my feet really hurt. Can we stop for a minute?"
Jin obediently stopped dead still and waited for her to catch up. He didn't look annoyed or impatient. He was blank, his expression unreadable. How did he manage to do that? She wondered absently.
"Not that there isn't a good view from up here," she said, then frowned, "Or at least there would be if I could see a damn thing, but are you sure this path is leading us somewhere? Maybe we should go back down. You never know – the bubble thing might come back, and if we jumped into it then the city and my sandals would come back, and we wouldn't want to miss that would we?"
"I don't think it sent the city away," he replied quietly. He was looking around for something.
"What do you mean?" She asked, "There's no city here. Unless you see something I don't, but you already said you didn't, so I'm assuming we see the same things, which means it sent the city away!"
Jin walked off a bit and sat down on a fallen log. Relieved, Ling hobbled over and joined him. He began taking his shoes off. Her eyes lit up.
"Oh Jin! I knew you cared," she said happily.
"I meant that I think the bubble sent *us* away," he continued.
She held out her hands to receive the shoes, but instead he handed her his socks. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Jin, I'm not holding your socks," she pointed out.
"They're for you to wear," he explained.
She looked at the socks, dirty and sweaty, and frowned incredulously. "You can't be serious?"
He looked at her, seriously.
"But – Eeuw!" She shrank away from them.
"Look at your feet," he said. She peered down at her feet. They throbbed from the battle with the hill. There was a trickle of dried blood between her toes where she had cut it on a stone, and they were covered with dust and dried mud.
"Besides," Jin carried on, "My shoes would be too big and you'd fall off the mountain and die."
"Okay, okay," she muttered, snatching the socks away while he put his shoes back on, "Drama queen."
"What?"
"So you think the bubble sent us away?" She questioned, wriggling her toes inside the socks.
Jin nodded his head, deep in thought, and then stood up and started walking up the hill again. Taking his socks for an initial test drive, Ling had to admit it was better than before.
So they continued on up the mountainside. The moon eventually disappeared from view as the trees came to a pinnacle overhead, and it grew quite black. Ling made more of an effort to keep up with Jin, and desolately wondered where the bubble had sent them. It had looked like the same beach, true, but there was so much shore in Japan that it could have been different. She couldn't really remember. Her feet were still aching.
A rustle in the undergrowth tore her attention back to the outside world, and she peered suspiciously at the trees. Her companion turned his head too, but did not stop walking. She took a deep breath and clenched her fists. If anyone was waiting to ambush them, they wouldn't stand a chance. Her Hakke Sho and Hika Ken had improved greatly over the tournament, and she knew Jin was as wired as he had always been. Just let the attackers come.
But nothing emerged from the bushy trees, and they carried on cracking and shaking in the high mountain wind. The sounds of twigs snapping as they hit against other twigs, small animals scurrying about their furry business and tree trunks creaking in their constant battle up the hillside were all the comfort they had.
She looked up, hopeful of seeing the stars, but the sight of closed leaves prevented her from doing so. This sucked. It was so dark now, she couldn't even see Jin in front of her, but the sound of his heavy footsteps alerted her to his presence. As soon as they vanished, she would start worrying. It was a silly thought, but after a whole city disappearing before her very eyes, she wasn't going to get complacent.
"So, Jin, how's this for travelling?" She said cutely into the darkness, weary of the silence that had descended between them.
She received a grunt for her troubles, and imagined him shrugging his shoulders in accompaniment.
"This would be a nice place for a theme park," she mused, imagining a roller coaster winding up the hillside, little souvenir shops tucked underneath its steely heights.
No answer. Just footsteps.
"Yeah, I can see it now," she carried on, "Roller coaster here, rapids over there, big old merry go round down there. There'd be people in little panda outfits doing the entertainment, and balloons floating off into the distance. I'm make them floaty so that when the little kids let go, they wouldn't be able to get them back, and they would cry so much that their parents have to buy them another one. More money for me," she giggled.
Still nothing.
She narrowed her eyes in determination. "And you could have your very own show, demonstrating karate to fat fathers and ambitious kids and drooling mothers. You'd make me rich!"
"What?" She heard a disbelieving voice from way up ahead. She hadn't realised she'd got so far behind. She hurried to catch up.
"You know you'd enjoy it," she teased.
"Xiao, I'm not doing that," he said firmly, "Not in a million years."
"Ah, Mr Grumpy," she grinned surreptitiously, "I think you'd be good at it."
"Don't even..."
Jin trailed off and she bumped into his back. She let out a muffled exclaimation and dodged around him. Something new could be seen up ahead.
There was a clearing, and there were lights. She started in excitement, and then a frown creased her features as they both took a few cautious steps towards the clearing.
The lights were lanterns, hanging outside wooden buildings. It was the tiniest little settlement, nestled into the mountain like a baby cuddled to it's mother. The buildings were clustered around what looked like a market, dead and lifeless like the night, and not a soul could be seen wandering about. Then, further up, she noticed a building. It was a beautiful Kansai palace.
A low mist hung about the ground, and the faint rush of a waterfall could be heard from up ahead. Searching the buildings for any sign of life, she saw none. But her jaw dropped in surprise at some horses stabled by the side of what looked to be a cottage.
She put a hand on Jin's shoulder in alarm, trying to stop herself from shaking. She said the first thing that came into her mind.
"Okay, Jin, I never really listened in history at school," she stammered, "But this looks like, well, *it*."
* * *
Hope you liked. Please review!
