Hello, everyone! I'm FINALLY back with a new chapter! I got caught up in Halloween madness and couldn't focus, but I finally had time to update. Thanks for waiting! I hope you all enjoy this long chapter!:)
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters. They are all property of Namco.
Just as he figured, there was nothing he could do to ease his nerves and mental agitation from the harrowing events from last night. There was too much on his mind, and even being surrounded by the comforting space of her room couldn't calm him, so he left. He had other business that needed to be attended to; however, the moment he stepped foot into his office, he became disgusted. His desk was still in disarray from various papers, files, and books that he normally would have tidied up before leaving for the night. He was assaulted with blurry flashbacks of the events that had transpired and instantly felt repulsed, so he had to leave the office immediately.
After deciding to abandon doing any actual work, he thought about retreating to his dojo to mediate and train to strengthen his physical and mental state, but that, too, never came into fruition due to his fatigue and listlessness. It was definitely irresponsible for him to brush aside his duties, but he completely lacked motivation today. This war was on his mind, but it oddly wasn't his top priority for the moment. He needed an escape, but there was none to be had.
It must've been a rare sighting for him to be seen meandering about the building's campus without a clear destination in mind. He always traveled from point A to point B; there were usually no stops in between, but since he felt so lost, he wandered without caring where he ended up. Various employees within the company bowed to him stiffly and nervously as he passed through the halls, and some saluted if they were off duty soldiers. As he boarded the elevator to the lower floors, the employees were respectful, or too frightened, to board with him and waited for the next car. He barely acknowledged anyone, and he didn't recognize faces or remember any names. When he took over the Mishima Zaibatsu, none of those things mattered to him, he had a clear goal in mind and he only cared about achieving it, nothing and no one else mattered. He was certain that, just like his grandfather, his subordinates feared him in the same manner.
Once he was downstairs, he found himself in the main lobby, a floor he commonly skipped to head straight to the garage level since he rarely used the main entrance. It felt strange roaming to other places besides his quarters, his private dojo, or his office, but he needed the walk to clear his mind. Jin stopped near the large windows to survey the grounds outside. Things only seemed quiet now because he had dispatched a good number of units to the Middle East to tighten security around the temple. G Corp had been making silent moves, but knowing Kazuya, he was always up to something. Judging by the growing number of reports concerning the presence of G Corp troops in the area, he knew that he was planning something big. 'I just have to remain one step ahead, he mustn't reach Azazel before I do,' he worried silently. 'This war, G Corp, Azazel, the devil gene, and. ..Nina…I can't keep my thoughts focused on anything at the moment.' There was so much on his plate at once that he didn't know where to begin in attempting to resolve anything.
"Um, it must be a stressful day for everyone," a small voice spoke.
Jin turned around slowly to look at the beholder of the timid voice, surprised that anyone had the audacity to speak to him directly. Upon looking at the face of the woman behind the desk, he recognized her as the secretary responsible for taking his calls and preparing his morning refreshments; however, he did not know her name. He remained silent as he subjected her to the scrutiny of his gaze, noting that on this particular day she appeared to look quite slovenly. Her blouse was soiled with an unsightly, wet stain, and he figured she had a clumsy mishap, which wasn't out of the ordinary considering her history. She must've noticed him observing her appearance with disdain because she began babbling nervously again.
The woman tried to cover the stain on her blouse by quickly crossing her arms. "Oh, this? I…um accidentally bumped into Miss Williams a moment ago," she needlessly explained, feeling pressured by his emotionless, blank stare.
He nearly raised a brow at her rambling. He assumed that Nina had left to run her errand once she hurried from her quarters, which was nearly an hour ago. What was the secretary talking about? "How long ago?" he questioned her with a calm intensity in his eyes. He could almost visibly see the woman trembling nervously as she sat at her desk.
"Oh…u-um about ten minutes ago," she stammered. "She seemed really stressed or upset about something after making a call from my desk...before quickly leaving." The woman sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, wondering if she had done something wrong by revealing that information.
'What errand did she have to run? She did seem stressed earlier, so much so that even others can visibly see it as well,' he pondered, trying to piece together the clues. 'This is so unlike her…something must've happened.' Jin shoved his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone to contact his bodyguard. His finger hovered over the call button before he began having strange doubts. He suddenly began to feel suspicious and decided that he'd find out the truth using his own methods. He began pressing a few buttons on the touch screen.
After a few moments, his brown eyes narrowed in suspicion as he received the search results. 'She's at a hotel in the city…?' he thought in confusion. How did she arrive at that location so quickly and what purpose did she have to go there? His mind was cluttered with confusing thoughts, and he decided to investigate this issue further. Using his phone, he made a quick call to get to the bottom of things.
A soldier from his secret service answered, "Yes, Master Kazama, how may I assist you, sir?"
"Track Nina Williams' phone and send a team to report her activity to me, " he commanded. Without hesitation, the soldier agreed to execute the order and ended the call to complete his newly assigned mission.
Jin lowered his eyes to the phone in his hand and exhaled. Perhaps he was being hasty in his approach to this situation, but her peculiar behavior as of late was making him a bit paranoid. She had been restless and agitated for quite a while now, and he wondered if she had been carefully planning to find her way out of his web of madness. He couldn't blame her. It still hadn't been a full twenty four hours since he had sunk his teeth into her hand and attacked her. Underneath her well kept façade of compliance and understanding, perhaps she had finally grown weary of dealing with him and his never-ending string of issues. He wondered if there were others under his rule who were secretly planning to escape or rebel against him. Lately, he felt that he was losing he handle on things; the war was at a stalemate, he had trouble suppressing the devil gene recently, and he was having trouble accepting the person he'd become just to keep his head afloat to compete with his adversaries in this deadly game of war. He felt the walls closing in on him.
'You're all alone…'
Jin could hear a faint echo in his thoughts, like a distant, faraway voice speaking to him.
'No one trusts you…she doesn't trust you…you shouldn't trust her…' the voice continued goading him. 'You should have let me kill her.'
He cringed and shook his head as he tried to focus his energy to banish his corrupt thoughts. 'I can't shake these negative thoughts lately…I feel his influence over me growing stronger everyday,' he thought with despondency. 'This is exactly what the demon wants…he's slowly driving me into madness and disconnecting me from reality.' He was at a lost about what he could do to ease his suffering; he needed a quicker remedy besides relying on the climax of this war. Jin inhaled and exhaled deeply in a few slow intervals to banish his dark thoughts away. He was stronger than this.
"M-Mr. Kazama, can I get you anything?" the woman behind the desk asked nervously. Hopefully, she didn't cause any trouble for anyone by recklessly blurting out that information to her superior.
Jin snapped out of his troubled thoughts and quickly replaced his slight look of worry with his usual mask of disconnected aloofness. He calmly dismissed the woman's offer with a blank stare as he left the lobby to retreat back to the place where he could find privacy and solitude, his office. He would patiently wait to receive updates from his team, but until then, he anticipated to get some reading done to distract himself from his thoughts.
The ride into the city had been less troublesome than it was the last time she'd taken the trip. Honestly, she wished for miles of a horrific traffic jam to delay her arrival to her destination to give herself more time. She periodically checked her GPS to track her phone and watched as her arrival time and distance from the hotel slowly decreased as the seconds passed. It was then that her mind began to conjure up several devious plans to find a way to weasel her way out of this situation to avoid coming face to face with…that boy.
In one scenario, she envisioned herself potentially using a chemical agent to render him unconscious, therefore eliminating the need to have any direct contact with him to simply retrieve her phone. It may have been a bit callous, but it would be quick, easy, and far less stressful for her. In another hypothetical situation, she wouldn't be hesitant to just storm into the room and exercise physical violence to complete the task. In the past, she never had any issues with using violence to resolve her conflicts; however, doing so in this situation seemed to be…overreacting or immoral. Morality, something she would hardly care about taking into consideration, was something that was now making a major impact on her decision making. Various schemes and conflicting thoughts kicked around in her mind as she drove in silence. It wasn't long before she finally arrived to her destination downtown and parallel parked her car across the street from the hotel.
Even after she turned the ignition off, she just sat in her vehicle silently with her hands perfectly perched on the steering wheel at ten and two. It was now or never, all she had to do was go inside, meet with him, and claim her phone. Her heart began drumming nervously as her apprehensions began resurfacing as she thought about how their meeting would turn out. Would she finally be able to muster up the courage to divulge everything she knew to him, or would she attempt to keep her identity shrouded in ambiguity? She drew in a slow, steady breath to help mentally prepare herself for this moment. Nina turned her head to look through the window of her car and stared at the hotel across the street with a faraway expression.
The hotel front was almost similar to the one she had staked out near almost two years prior when she had set her sights on a particular target, the very young man she was gearing up to meet with in a few minutes. She wondered how different things would have turned out if she followed through with her mission and pulled the trigger. The pay out would have been great, but would that price be enough to stave off a guilty conscience that would eat away at her for the rest of her days? Would she have felt guilt at all?
Until this day, she still didn't understand what had compelled her to change her mind at the last minute. Even after she had received the complete intel from the mafia the previous night, she still forced herself to get over her initial shock of her morbid connection to her target and complete her mission as planned. She didn't sleep well that night after having such a heavy weight dropped onto her shoulders, but she still convinced herself that he had to be eliminated. He was the lone survivor of a perverse scientific experiment that should have never existed in the first place; she tried to convince herself that she'd be doing him a favor, and she would have been relieved to erase his existence as well, so it'd be a win-win situation.
Despite the very long, mentally taxing night she had grappling with those ideas, when she finally had him lined up in her cross hairs with her finger firmly gripping the trigger, she froze. Seeing his face with her eyes through the scope of her rifle made her feel sick. It was a feeling that she still didn't understand or couldn't explain in words; it was that same feeling that forced her to not put a bullet through his brain and the same feeling that repelled her from him. What is guilt? Regret? Pain? Sympathy? Love? Whatever it was, it wasn't love, she was sure of that, for the only person she could remember herself loving was her father. Besides that, she didn't believe that she was capable of love.
Nina felt a certain tightness balling up within her chest as she opened those old wounds in her memories. She released her grip from the steering wheel and raised her hand to her temples to lightly massage away the tension. 'I'm here now…there's no turning back,' she thought as she woefully gazed at the hotel. 'I've never been this nervous before in my life, but I'm also anxious to just get this over with.'
In the midst of her mental pep talk, she snapped out of her thoughts when she noticed a small group of Tekken Force soldiers disembarking from a vehicle and congregating outside the hotel. Nina narrowed her eyes in confusion as she focused in on the men while unconsciously lowering herself in her seat, almost forgetting that they probably wouldn't notice her anyway due to the tinted windows on her vehicle. She wondered what business they had there. Normally, they would be patrolling the area, a measure they took to establish and maintain order and control since crime rates and violence had drastically increased since the war started, but it seemed like they were called to this location for a particular purpose. Was there an incident occurring inside? Perhaps there was a disgruntled hotel guest that needed to be escorted from the grounds, but that was hardly a matter that required assistance from armed military forces. The curious blonde peered across the street and watched as the group of four soldiers entered the building while one remained on guard outside as he appeared to be speaking with someone through his earpiece.
'Why the hell are they here? They seem to be receiving direct orders, but from whom?' she pondered curiously as she continued to surveil the scene. For safety measures, she decided to assess the situation thoroughly before making her next move.
By late afternoon, his attention began waning from his reading. He was already midway through Kafka's Metamorphosis before the team he had dispatched earlier began contacting him about updated reports regarding their mission. He connected his earpiece to his ear to begin listening in on their progress and give them new directives if needed. Jin didn't know what he expected, but his main objective was for them to locate Nina to report her activity and to have her report in to him immediately. However, it seemed there was something else amidst. They had arrived to her location and infiltrated the hotel, but it took a moment for them to report back in with recent updates.
Strangely, he was beginning to feel anxious about the situation, and somehow he began feeling regret for his over hasty approach, but his mind had planted a seed of doubt that drove him to act irrationally for a moment. He sat at his desk with his elbows propped on his desk with his hands folded in front of his mouth as he impatiently waited for updates. After a few more moments of silence, he heard a transmission through his earpiece.
"Sir!" the man's report pierced his ear, nearly startling him. "We have a situation!"
Jin's eyes widened a bit as the squad leader informed him of this. "What is it?" he asked sternly.
"We arrived to the GPS signal and requested entry into the room, but after the occupant's refusal, we had to use force."
Jin was slightly baffled by the report. He had told them to simply track her location and report her activity, not engage or use deadly force. His heart thumped a little harder as he became even more agitated from the information he received. Before he could scold the soldier, he continued with another report.
"After forcing the door down, we discovered a young male in the room," the soldier continued reporting. "He appears to be in possession of Nina Williams' phone."
"A young man?" he muttered in a low voice. None of this was making sense to him at the moment, and he began doubting the details of the report. He narrowed his eyes and sighed heavily. 'A lost phone…a hotel room…a young male…?' he pondered gravely as he tried to piece together the information in his head. Before he could do so, more reports came in. Now, on the other end, he could hear a loud commotion in the background as the soldier attempted to give him more updates.
"The suspect is now using brute force, we must engage!" he informed his superior in an excitable tone. "Should we subdue or terminate him, sir!?"
He had to make a swift decision with little to no time to formally assess the situation. Who was the young man? Was he an agent of G Corp? Had something happened to Nina? Or was she secretly meeting with this man to provide him with inside information? His mind was reeling as his heart thumped erratically as he tried to focus and give a proper order to the team.
"Sir! We were finally able to subdue the suspect with a stun rod, but he nearly took down the entire team in an attempt to resist detainment!"
Jin closed his eyes and breathed a silent sigh of relief as the situation was resolved without having to intervene with his own decision. After all, these soldiers were far more experienced at handling situations like this than he was, so he was glad that he trusted their instincts. After his nerves calmed down, he asked, "Were you able to detain and question him? Where's Nina?"
"Miss Williams is no where in sight, and we're running checks on the suspect now that he's unconscious," the soldier replied.
Even with all of these scattered puzzle pieces handed to him, he still couldn't place them together to figure out what was going on. He didn't expect any of this to happen, he thought this would be a simple mission to track down his bodyguard, but things became unexpectedly complicated. He still tried to understand how that man had gotten a hold of her phone, and most importantly, he was worried about Nina's involvement in all of this. 'I need to stop jumping to these strange conclusions…I need to relax and focus,' he thought as he nervously awaited for more information from the team to ease his paranoia.
"Sir, we ran a quick background check on the man and discovered some shocking results,' he paused before continuing. "The man appears to be registered under the code name 'NT01', a rogue test subject from the Mishima Laboratory!"
Jin remained silent. That code name forced him to recede into his thoughts. He closed his eyes and sighed heavily as everything slowly started to make sense. From his in depth and detailed research on Nina, he had come across everything concerning her past activities within the Mishima Lab. He knew everything about those heinous experiments and was even considering reopening research about it at one point to see if it would lead him to more information about the devil gene. That code number revealed a very shocking detail about her past, about what had been done to her, and it revealed how twisted his family truly was. Being sympathetic to her plight, he never mentioned it or questioned her about her past, even during the vetting process before he enlisted her for her services. Even after they'd become more open with one another over time, she never discussed anything concerning that matter, and he never deigned to attempt to ask her about it out of respect for her boundaries. 'Nina…is this what she was hiding from me? She should have just told me instead of keeping this a secret,' he thought as he slipped into a pensive mood.
"Sir? Are you still there?" the soldier chimed in through the earpiece. "More information has come through. Subject NT01 was wanted under suspicion of arson at a research facility, which resulted in the termination of the super soldier experiment. We're taking him into custody."
"No," he asserted strongly. "It's done, there's no need for him now." This situation was already messy enough, and he already felt guilty for adding even more confusion to everything.
"Are you sure you want to let him off the hook, sir?" the soldier asked with uncertainty about his decision.
As always, he loathed having his authority questioned. "Do as I say, and remember to return with the device," he ordered coldly. "That is all." With that, he pushed a button on the earpiece to end the connection and removed it from his ear. He sat back into his leather chair and brought his hand to his face as he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. He executed this mission and his primary goal still remained unfulfilled. He still had no idea where Nina had gone or when she'd return, but when she did, he needed to have a long talk with her.
Things definitely weren't turning out as she envisioned they would. She figured all she had to do was quickly rendezvous with the boxer, answer his questions with vague answers and lies, and make her way back so that she could check on her employer's well being. This, however, was an unprecedented turn of events. After observing from her car, she finally saw an opportunity to enter the hotel without being spotted by the team of Tekken Force soldiers. The soldier posted by the entrance seemed to have been called into action and swiftly entered the building, and it was then that she approached the hotel and entered as surreptitiously and inconspicuously as possible. Hopefully, from the surveillance footage she would appear as nothing more than a normal patron.
The commotion from the presence of the soldiers had commanded the attention from other guests in the main lobby as well as any staff members who spectated with curiosity and fear. This had allowed her to casually enter the stairwell and swiftly make her way up to the third floor. As she exited the stairwell, it didn't take long to pinpoint where all the action was occurring. She carefully and cautiously traversed down the long corridor, having no trouble appearing as a normal guest since there were other hotel guests peering out their doors to see what was happening; however, it wasn't long before they retreated back into their rooms in cowardice to avoid any involvement.
By the time she reached the end of the hall, she quickly pressed her back against the wall and discreetly looked around the corner and watched as a group of soldiers poured from the hotel room she was supposed to visiting, a few of them limping and hunched over in pain. She was perplexed about what business they had with the boxer. She knew next to nothing about him besides whatever she had procured from her own research in the past. Was he somehow still being tracked by the Mishima Zaibatsu? Were they going to take him back to the laboratory? That question answered itself since she didn't see the soldiers with him in their custody as they walked in the opposite direction of her position to head back to the elevator. Still, her stomach was turning slightly from what she would uncover once she approached the room.
Once the coast was clear, she left her cover and slowly made her way to room 302 with a beating heart and her hair standing on end. Her heeled boots stepped over chunks of wood pieces scattered across the carpeted floor as she stood near the aperture into the room. She took a deep breath before cautiously spying into the room; her eyes widened slightly in shock. A young blond male was splayed face downwards on the floor surrounded by various broken furniture pieces and other objects from the altercation.
A barely audible gasp escaped from her lips as she fully observed the scene before her, completely speechless. She hesitantly took a few steps into the room as she felt oddly compelled to move closer to the injured boxer. Her eyes fell upon him as her heart continued rapidly pumping in her chest while she tried to debate what she should do next as she approached him more closely. Her eyes never left him as she very slowly knelt down beside him and outstretched her hand to attempt to wake him or assess the severity of his condition. Her hand slowly reached towards his shoulder and was mere moments from making contact until the young man groaned lowly as he slowly came back into consciousness.
Nina retracted away from him and stood to her height as she took a few steps back. He coughed a few times as he slowly peeled his face up from the floor. As a career boxer, she figured that it was completely possible for him to bounce back quickly from a knockout with no trouble, and it seemed that he would be fine after a few moments. As he lifted his head upwards, she had to fight the urge to turn away from him to avoid his gaze. When she finally saw his face, she was shocked to see his right eye nearly closing with a bloody gash above his eyebrow. Her stomach turned again. 'Those bastards clearly didn't exercise restraint when handling him,' she thought irritably. 'Why the hell were they here in the first place?'
The blond boxer slowly opened his eyes as he glanced around at his surroundings with blurred vision until they landed on the figure of the blonde woman standing in the room and silently staring down at him. He was confused for a moment before his groggy thoughts cleared up and recalled everything. His lip curled into a weak sneer. "Y-You…it was you…" he spoke to her in a low voice laced with anger and pain. "Why did…you lie to me?"
The blonde assassin felt uneasy as he spoke to her. She was confused about what he was talking about but decided to hear him out.
The young man propped himself up weakly on his elbows as he glared up at the woman. "I told you that I would give you your damn phone, but you still sent your goons to jump me just to get it back!" he yelled accusingly. "You…you work for the Mishima Zaibatsu…"
Nina felt like a deer frozen in headlights as he angrily hurled these accusations at her. She would have interrupted him to clear things up about the misunderstanding, but what would be the purpose? Perhaps it was best that he viewed her as a villain, and hopefully this would deter him from any future attempts of tracking her down, for his own safety. She lowered her eyes from him as he continued to gaze at her contemptuously.
"I don't know who the hell you are, but you're nothing but trouble!" he declared angrily. He was now certain about her identity, she was the woman from the hotel that day he was nearly snuffed out by the mafia. She was an albatross. "Stay away from me…just go!"
She was at a loss for words. Things shouldn't have turned out this way, but things were out of her control. Her lips parted slightly as she attempted to say something, and she even noticed the slight anticipation on his face despite him previously yelling at her to leave. Whatever she wanted to say had choked itself in her throat and nothing came forth from her lips. This was it; this was all there was and should be of this troubled relationship. Nina turned away from him and faced the doorway. She could hear more commotion from down the hall as she figured that the hotel staff had finally called for help once the Tekken Force left the premises. It was best for her to leave before she was deemed as a suspect or witness, neither of which she had patience for dealing with at the moment.
She glanced over her shoulder at the blond boxer one last time before sighing softly to herself and vacating the room. 'I'm sorry...Steve…'
It wasn't until nightfall that he finally received a report from the security gates informing him of his bodyguard's return. He told them to notify him immediately because he didn't want to delay the discussion they needed to have like he had done concerning other matters in the past. It was best if they resolved this now to avoid tension between them because time was too valuable to waste being at odds with each other. However, her temperament was unpredictable, and he didn't know how she'd react to being confronted.
After a few more minutes of waiting alone in his dimmed office, he heard the door to his office beep before it opened. The raven haired man drew in a breath as he intently watched the blonde woman stroll in with her usual withdrawn air about her. He was prepared for her to come in livid and in an argumentative mood, but so far she seemed restrained. He waited until she stopped about five feet from his desk before he addressed her. The assassin calmly glared at him in silence; she appeared to be dejected or upset, possibly both. "Well," his deep voice broke the silence as he sat back into his chair and never broke eye contact from her. "Explain yourself." He could see her briefly roll her eyes as she slowly crossed her arms.
Nina wasn't in the mood for any of what he had in store for her tonight. The cherry on top of an already very bad day was being informed that she had to immediately report to his office as she cleared security. She was emotionally drained and had no gusto to discuss anything or argue with him this evening, so she would allow him to chew her out before retreating to her quarters to rinse away the memories of this horrid day. She sighed heavily as she focused her blue eyes on his dark brown gaze. "I went to take care of some personal business," she finally spoke in a flat tone. "I don't see how that's anything to get yourself worked up over."
He already felt a tinge of anger building within him from her dismissive response. He casually reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled her phone from it before quickly tossing it towards the woman. As expected, she had no trouble catching the phone with her cat-like reflexes. "You thought it was best to deceive me just to hide your secret? All of this could have been avoided if you would have been open to discussing this with me."
Nina clenched the phone in her hand and continued to glare at him angrily. It was now that she felt her infamous temper bubbling within her. Earlier, she had a sneaking suspicion that he was behind that impromptu operation at the hotel, but she didn't want to jump the gun and blame anyone until she had concrete evidence. Even so, she still exercised great restraint to control her temper. "My personal business doesn't concern you or anyone else," she warned in a slightly menacing tone. "You've crossed the line."
Admittedly, he was somewhat offended by her cold response. He didn't understand why she seemed so upset with him. He knew that it was a sensitive topic for her, but he still wanted to clear the air and understand what was troubling her. Besides, he didn't mind distracting himself from his own unresolvable issues to help her with her own; however, he would have to tread very lightly. He sighed in frustration and pinched the bridge of his nose before saying, "Listen…I didn't mean to interfere, and I take full responsibility for what happened to Ste-"
"Don't…" she interjected sharply as she slowly shook her head. She didn't want to hear him speak that name to her at the moment. "I don't want to talk about this!" Nina desperately wanted to avoid this topic; dwelling on it wasn't doing anything positive for her mental and emotional stability.
"Why are you so upset about this?" he questioned her. "Did you truly want to see him?"
"Why do you think you can meddle in my private affairs?" she countered with a fervent anger burning within her cold gaze. "This didn't concern you and you should have let me handle this on my own!"
"When your private affairs begin interfering with your contractual terms and obligations, then it becomes my business," he reminded her in a brusque tone with a straight face.
"Fuck the contract, Jin!" she fired back at him irately. "You had no right to do this!" The blonde assassin clenched her fists by her side as she took a step forward.
Jin finally sat forward in his chair as she became increasingly angry with him. He already accepted responsibility for his part in the mishap, but it seemed that she wanted to project her anger unto him regardless without admitting her own faults in the matter. "If you were honest with me, none of this would have happened," he reminded and berated her once again.
She was beginning to reach her breaking point. When she became angry, everything and anyone around her was at risk of facing her wrath, which is why it was imperative that she had time to isolate herself and cool off so that she could confront difficult situations in a more rational and levelheaded state of mind. Every word he spoke to her was pushing her further into the red zone, and what she spoke next was evidence of that. "Don't you dare sit there and lecture me about honesty!" she hissed snidely. "You're a liar, and you still didn't have the guts to tell Eddy the truth."
His brown eyes stretched open a bit in shock from her words. He was taken aback and wondered how she found out that information. He'd been quietly coping with that shame and never intended on telling her about that meeting. He exhaled and lowered his eyes for a moment as he fell silent.
"So, it's true?" Nina scoffed with a small shake of her head. She couldn't believe that he actually sunk so low to deceive a comrade; she then wondered if she was completely exempt from his deceit. His silence confirmed that he was indeed caught in his lie. Not only that, she was still none too happy about his interference in her personal affairs.
A few moments passed of nothing but pure silence looming over the dim office; the tension was heavy, nearly suffocating as they both were forced to reflect on the hurtful things they spoke to each other. Nina took a few deep breaths and let her eyes wander to the calming backdrop of the sparkling city lights through the windows behind. She placed her face in the palm of her hand and tried to calm herself. There were so many emotions coursing through her at the moment that she felt like she was ready to shut down.
The past few days had been hell for them, and things weren't getting any better. The darkness within him was stirring more actively, and he began to suspect that it was bubbling over and tainting his relationships with the people around him. His anger felt displaced at times, but he couldn't control it. In his mind, there were more venomous words formulating in his head, and he could feel the devil's compulsion to spew more hatred and hurtful words to the woman before him, but he bit his tongue to prevent himself from further jeopardizing his relationship with his bodyguard. He was torn from his thoughts when he heard the soft thuds of her heels against the floor retreating away from him. He looked up and saw her as she walked towards the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" his voice cut through the silence.
"I need space," she answered as she headed to the door.
He narrowed his eyes, peeved at her vague answer. "What makes you think you can leave so freely after what happened today?" he mentioned in a terse tone. "You're lucky I'm not suspending you."
The blonde paused and glanced over her shoulder at him with an unamused expression. It seemed he was in a pugnacious mood this evening, and with her fiery temper, she knew nothing good would come from engaging in his attempts to anger her. "Don't be an asshole," she said disdainfully with a frown. "I'll come back when I feel I'm ready to deal with you." She left and the door closed shut behind her.
After she finally left, he exhaled heavily and ran his fingers through his dark locks, tussling them as he rubbed his head in frustration. He didn't know how to deal with the contumacious woman, but it was probably for the best that he give her time to cool off since they were on the cusp of an argument. It had been a tough day, but probably even more so for her due to her ill fated reunion with her son. Actually, he didn't know how to define their dilemma, and it wasn't his place to do so. He reacted prematurely to the situation and allowed his doubts and paranoid thoughts to be further manipulated by his influence.
Jin hung his head low with a restless sigh as he reflected on his actions. Was that truly the case, or was he using that as a scapegoat for his own immoral behavior lately? His two halves seemed to be converging lately, and he desperately had to get his mind right to prevent that from happening at all costs. The world was already suffering from his own actions to establish order with chaotic methods, but a future ruled by an evil being who openly wanted chaos wouldn't be livable for anyone.
End of chapter 30!
Whew! This was originally going to be two chapters, but I wanted the next chapter to stand alone. So...Nina took on a 'private mission' without permission; Jin let his paranoia get the best of him; poor Steve got caught in the middle (Note: Based on T7, I'm still writing under the premise that Steve hasn't fully uncovered who Nina is, even though from all the proof from T4, he should already know, but Namco decided to backtrack). Both Jin and Nina have some faults in this messy situation, but hopefully they can forgive and forget. The next chapter will be intense...:)