ACT I: Heihachi

"Where is he?"

"In Master Kazuya's room, Mishima-sama."

"Good." Heihachi turned from his butler. "Oh-" Heihachi gave an icy smile. "Don't ever call it that again."

Heihachi strode through the halls of the Mishima Estate. It was summer and the house was suffused with that later gold that comes after heavy storms. A typhoon had been raging for three days and broken only a few hours ago. The gutters were singing with fresh rain and the gloom of the house had finally been dispelled by soft light. Doors had been thrown open to let out some of the stuffy humidity that had collected in these walls. As Heihachi passed from room to room, he saw glimpses of the rain-battered gardens beyond.

He stopped in front of Kazuya's old room and pushed open the door. His gaze swept over the simple, refined décor. The room was empty. He frowned. He turned the light on and stepped within. It wasn't empty after all. In the corner, half-hidden by a dresser, a boy was propped up. His white hoodie and tracksuit were caked with mud and still soaked from rain. There was even mud dotted up the boy's cheeks. He was leaning against a wall, dark hair all askew, mouth open a little, fast asleep.

Heihachi watched him for a moment, chest stirring with a concoction of mixed feeling that sight brought to him. There were regrets, maybe, anger, though he wasn't rightly sure at what, pity, though in a small measure, and irritation that someone who bore his blood could be this pathetic creature, catching what rest it could, like some wild animal on the run.

"Jin!" he barked.

The boy flinched awake, pushing himself into the corner, dark eyes blinking. Heihachi watched him impassively. Jin seemed to realise where he was. He scrambled to his feet and bowed to Heihachi. When he thought he wasn't being watched, the boy brushed away sleep from his eyes and smudged a splotch of dirt.

"Is that anyway to greet your grandfather?!" Heihachi snapped.

The boy looked up at him with large, uncertain eyes. He murmured an apology.

"Well?!"

The boy froze, then got out- "Hello, Ojiisan."

"Try again."

There was confusion in those eyes now. He could see the boy's chest rising and falling fast as he tried to understand how he had fallen short. Heihachi's patience was draining, and a frown settled into his brow. The boy blinked, at least able to read that he had displeased him.

"Hello… Ojiisama?" Jin offered, tentatively.

There was a moment's silence, where the boy's eyelashes flickered anxiously and his balled fists quivered.

"Better!" Heihachi beamed. "Now, what's this, you're still in those old rags? Have you not washed?"

The boy swallowed. His silences grated on Heihachi's temper, but he kept an even disposition for now.

"I… didn't know where the bathroom was," the boy admitted.

"Did a servant not show you?!"

Jin retracted from his raised voice. He took another moment to process and answer that.

"Yes… but I forgot. I thought I would get lost."

Heihachi looked at him. He met that gaze full of troubled, unspoken depths. He burst out laughing.

"Bwahahaha! You'll get used to it soon enough! You're a Mishima now, and you will learn your place and all that comes with it. Now, get washed, I'll have some proper clothes sent here. We'll have to go and get you fitted for something another day. Tell a servant when you're done. I want to get a proper look at you, not whilst you're all dressed like some street urchin. Be quick about it."

A Tekken Force detail had caught Jin trying to break into the Mishima Estate grounds a few hours ago. On hearing of his supposed heritage, Heihachi had taken a car out to see the intruder for himself. The boy was Kazuya's splitting image. A leaner creature, more sorrowful, less consumed with rage, but Kazuya none-the-less. Heihachi wasn't superstitious by nature, but there was something chilling about seeing his child's child, sent as if from beyond the grave, to this house where it had all begun. Kazuya would never have sent a child here. It was that smug thought alone that amused Heihachi into allowing the boy entry. From here on out though, the boy had to impress on his own, not just on the basis that Heihachi could one-up his dead son.

It was early evening. Heihachi sat on an embroidered cushion before the crackling remains of a firepit. He'd recently brewed a tea over its aromatic embers. Green tea and firewood were a good combination. He was looking over financial reports. It was routine work, but something about it felt different today. Everything on the estate felt different. Something had changed from the stale, grey mundanity of the everyday. It wasn't just the storm breaking. He couldn't put his finger on the feeling. He'd lived alone in these walls for nearly fifteen years, just him and his house staff. He certainly didn't miss the defiance and crafty rebellion of his sons, but the house had always felt lifeless somehow without them. And his training too – alone, unchallenged, supreme – gliding up and down the ancestral dojo, with no sharp-witted son to try and test him… He shook his head and moved his gaze back to his work from where it had slunk into the jewelled gleam of the embers.

A servant was lingering in the corner of his eye, waiting to ask a question of him. Heihachi read through a couple more lines before he lifted his attention to them.

"The only thing that will fit him is old clothes of your sons, Mishima-sama. If I give him Master Kazuya's-"

"No!" Heihachi surprised even himself with that. He cleared his throat. "Not Kazuya's. Give him something of Chaolan's."

The servant bowed and departed. Heihachi perused his own emotions. Why not Kazuya's? The boy already looked so much like him. That hair, those eyebrows, something deep in his gaze, a strength beyond all the immediate fear and concern. He'd given the boy Kazuya's room without even thinking, he didn't need to see him in his clothes too. Heihachi's gaze fell dark on the ancient paintings on the walls. Today they did not feel like his. Today they felt like ancestors judging him from their restless afterlifes. There was a generation missing. A generation driven from this place into banishment and death. The eyes in the paper seemed to look out at him as if to say – and this one, will he too be ruined under this roof?

The boy came in some time later in a deep violet kimono with an embroidered kirin picked out in silver dancing over the front. Jin shifted in the rich material, not quite sure what to do with himself. His fingertips played at the sleeve hems and his gaze was firmly averted.

"Head up," Heihachi ordered. The boy obeyed, drawing in a breath as he did. "Turn around."

The boy did. The kimono didn't suit him at all. Honestly, Heihachi had no recollection of agreeing to buy the thing for Lee. Perhaps it had been a compromise to let the boy have flamboyance without indulging in the budding desire both his sons had to flaunt traditional wear and pitch up to important events in leather jackets and jeans.

"Sit." Heihachi indicated to a cushion opposite him. Jin knelt on it dutifully. As he did, his stomach grumbled loudly. The boy didn't seem to have any sense of lost propriety over this. Heihachi raised an eyebrow. "Hungry?" he asked mildly.

The boy nodded.

Heihachi's lip twisted. "Pardon?"

"Yes,… Ojiisama," Jin corrected quickly.

It was going to be a real task to drill some respect and class into this urchin.

"Well, answer my questions and perhaps I'll have some food prepared for you."

Jin looked up at him hopefully. That surprised Heihachi. He couldn't see any of the calculation, the subdued defiance, and spiteful obsequiousness his sons would reluctantly pay him. There was just an open honesty to this Kazama Jin. It threw Heihachi. He wasn't entirely sure how to control it.

Heihachi poured himself a steaming cup of tea from the soot-blackened kettle.

"Where have you come from?" Heihachi asked.

The boy breathed faster through his nose.

"… Y-… Yakushima, Ojiisama," Jin said, very quietly.

"Yakushima? Off Kyushu? That's your home?"

The boy nodded.

"Why did you leave?"

Heihachi nearly flinched himself at the sudden jolt that went through the boy. Something hard and wild ignited in his eyes. They blazed with an internal fire, and he said nothing. That interested Heihachi. There was something there beyond all this meek fear. Something that could be wrought into steel. It still didn't excuse his rude manner though.

"I asked you a question!" Heihachi rapped out, voice getting a little louder.

Jin's gaze swung to him, hunted, haunted, and with something terrible in it. He still said nothing. Heihachi was about to raise his voice when the boy gave him something:

"I want you to train me. I want to be stronger."

Heihachi was silent for moment. He sipped his tea. He set it down carefully on a small, circular heat mat.

"Why?"

"So that I can take revenge."

Heihachi nodded. Now that, he could work with.

"Revenge against whom, Kazama Jin?"

The boy's chest was rising and falling fast, incensed and aggrieved. The anger in his eyes was something livid and untamed. It wasn't yet cooled and refined into mature hatred like Kazuya's had been. It was still raw, innocent even, just unbridled emotion not yet built into anything useful.

"I can teach you," Heihachi said. "I can build you into something formidable. But why should I? An unschooled brat, unrefined, no respect, no education. You think sharing my blood makes you eligible for my tutelage? You think I'd let someone like you take on the mantle of the Mishima legacy?"

He saw it then, the desperation: the hook he needed. Jin placed his hands on the tatami and bowed his forehead to the ground.

"Please teach me, Ojiisama! I don't have anywhere left to go! If it comes for me-… Please. I don't know what else to do, or where else to go! Everything is burned. It's all burned. I'm afraid. I can learn – education and respect and all you said – I can learn it. I can be all those things – just please don't send me away. Teach me so that I can be strong. So that I can destroy it!"

Heihachi was very calm.

"Destroy what, Jin?"

Jin sat up. His eyes were wild fear. He put his hands to his head. His fingers arched in taught pain. He pressed his nails into his scalp. His breath was coming fast and shallow.

Heihachi didn't have time for these theatrics. He stood.

Jin's head snapped up. "W-wait, I-"

"I'm a busy man. I don't care to entertain your weaknesses."

"W-wait, I- I can say it, I just- G-give me a moment, I just need-"

"You are weak, Kazama Jin. Go back to your room. When you remember how to answer a question you're asked, you will be fed."

"Please, I'm sorry. I can't-"

Heihachi swept out of the room.

At mid-morning the next day, Heihachi was sitting in his study. Bright sunlight was filling up the room. Another hot tea was steaming on his desk. His thumb and forefinger brushed slowly, tracing out his moustache as he read over this morning's summary of his corporation's media optics. A knock sounded on his door. Heihachi let them wait for a minute or two before allowing them entry.

"Speak," he said, not looking up.

"About your grandson, Mishima-sama…" His head butler stood in the doorway.

"What about him?"

"He has not left his room yet today, sir. Shall I have something sent into him? A little breakfast?"

"Hunger loosens the tongue, Fujita-san."

"Yes, sir, but uh- in my estimation, it has been some while since the boy ate well before he even arrived here."

"Hmm?" A headline had caught Heihachi's eye, some central American local newspaper had run a not entirely favourable piece on his Tekken Force. "What is this?" He pointed at the headline. "Get me the whole of this piece translated at once."

"Very good, sir, and young master Jin?"

"What about him? Send him to me this evening, we'll see if he's feeling more talkative."

The butler hesitated, but bowed and departed all the same.

Jin was in another of Lee's kimonos, this time light brown, with cream cherry blossoms falling across one side. It still didn't suit him. Heihachi was taking supper in the dining room. The table was laid for one. He was slow and deliberate in helping himself to hot sticky rice. Jin came and knelt across from him, eyes glued to the food.

Heihachi took a clump of rice to a slither of teppanyaki fried beef.

"Have anything more to say to me today, Kazama Jin?"

Jin nodded fervently. "Yes, Ojiisama."

"Well? And?"

The boy's breath was already coming fast again. He looked up at Heihachi. His lips moved, though no sound came out. Heihachi waited.

"Th-… there was a demon. I-it-… A demon attacked my home."

Heihachi continued eating. "A demon."

"Y-yes. It was taller than my house, w-with green… green skin. A-and long, red hair, like the kijo in Momijigari."

Heihachi's chopsticks paused on the way to his lips.

He knew that description. Jin had seen it. He'd seen the creature he'd been hunting these past long months. The Ogre, called god by some, perhaps a demon as Jin had described it, perhaps something not of this world at all. He continued to eat slowly. No need to lose his advantage in holding all the cards, even if this boy did now deeply interest him.

"There is a legend of such a beast." The moment Heihachi said it, Jin leaned forward, food and etiquette forgotten. His palms were on the table and a desperation was in his eyes. "It is said that an ogre who feeds off the fighting spirit of strong warriors once roamed the earth. It sought out only the strongest to devour their souls."

Jin was shaking, Heihachi realised. His expression remained defiant and determined though.

"You do not look like a strong fighter to me. You look weak. Why would the Ogre seek out one such as you?"

Jin looked at him, his breath was so rapid, Heihachi wondered faintly if the boy was about to collapse.

"N-… not me," Jin got out.

Heihachi motioned with a finger. From out of the shadows, a servant emerged with a second tray of food. They set it down before Jin. Jin picked up a pair of chopsticks eagerly.

Heihachi clicked his tongue in disapproval. Jin's chopsticks drooped back down to the table. His lower lip quivered, and his gaze was glued wistful to the rice.

"I want a full description of Ogre's attack. Was it recently?"

Jin's grip tightened on his chopsticks. He looked longingly at the food before him.

"Was it recently?!" Heihachi barked.

The boy jumped and nodded. His attention was on Heihachi now. "My… my birthday. T-….two and a bit days ago."

"And who was the target? Your mother?"

Something curious happened then. Jin's shaking subsided and he went very, very still. His eyes glazed over, and he seemed to have stopped breathing entirely.

Heihachi sighed through his teeth. Perhaps the boy was tired. He was an odd one. Kazuya used to become furious in the face of trauma, whilst Lee would become fearful and anxious. Jin seemed to just fall into abrupt silences.

"Eat," Heihachi told him. "We'll discuss the rest another day."

Jin fell on the food without another word. He started wolfing down his rice. Tears had started tracking down his cheeks, Heihachi realised.

"I don't like to see tears in my house."

Jin wiped roughly at his eyes and kept shovelling food into his mouth.

"Slow down and eat that with more dignity. You'll make yourself sick."

Jin sat up straighter and began to pick at his food more slowly. As soon as Heihachi turned his attention back to his own meal, he saw Jin's chopsticks start to dart between different bowls again. His rice and fried vegetables were going down fast; less so the beef. Heihachi pointed at the bowl in question.

"I thought you were hungry. What's wrong? Wagyu beef not good enough for you?"

His grandson looked up from where he was poised over his rice bowl. Those large eyes were just staring, full of incomprehensible mysteries that perplexed Heihachi. They turned upon the beef bowl. Jin reached out and took a piece of beef. He looked back at Heihachi. He placed it in his mouth and chewed. A frown stole over his face.

"Good, eh?" Heihachi said. "Everything here will be yours here from now on, so don't let me see you hesitating again. Everything around you is your birthright. Have no shame in taking it."

Instead of looking relieved, the boy's eyes only looked sad. Heihachi was troubled by this. He was a master at creating a balance between fear and benevolence. Neither quite chimed right with Jin. He'd genuinely meant to settle the boy with that last statement. His musing was cut off however by Jin glancing back up. He looked hopeful, and Heihachi found his own hopes rising with him.

"Does this mean you will train me?" Jin asked.

Heihachi considered holding out on the boy longer, on the off chance that he caught on to how swiftly that mention of Ogre had brought him round. He didn't seem to have Lee or Kazuya's cunning though, and Heihachi wanted to see that face lit with something other than sorrow.

"Of course," he said.

And there it was as. Light entered the boy's face and his smile glowed so bright it single-handedly wiped every cobweb from the dark rafters of the Mishima Estate.

"Thank you," Jin said. "I won't let you down."

"We'll see about that." Heihachi was pleased though. He gave a smile himself as he continued eating.

They finished the rest of their meal in silence. Heihachi stood when he was done.

"Do as you will, but get some rest. I will see you in the dojo at six A.M tomorrow to see what you're capable of." Jin bowed in acknowledgement to him. "Oh, and don't wander around at night. I keep a pet bear and he isn't used to you yet."

Heihachi yawned as he padded through the house. He opened a door onto a veranda. He pulled his hakama up a little and shed his indoor shoes, letting his bare feet rest on the sun-warmed wood of the step down into the zen gardens. He drew out a large, fat cigar, clipped the end, lit it, and set it between his lips. Pungent smoke coiled in his mouth. He held it there a moment before blowing it out soft from the corners of his lips. He looked out at the sunset. Strong ribbons of tangerine orange were lulling into burning reds and moody purples. The silhouette of his ancestral pagoda temple was dark under mountain foothills that were painted strident shades of cooler blue and lilac in the evening.

His ears picked up on the familiar sound of a child's footsteps on wood. He looked behind him, breathing out another furl of smoke as he did.

Kazama Jin padded out of the manor house and sat himself next to him. He didn't say anything. He just joined him in looking at the sunset.

Heihachi wasn't sure either of his sons had ever sat next to him voluntarily in all the long, tumultuous years they'd lived together under this roof. He had an inkling, then, that things were going to be very different with Jin.

Author Note: Hello all, I'm back with a new fic. It's going to be a long one in three acts:

I. Heihachi
II. Xiaoyu
III. Hwoarang

The story is set over four years and each chapter will be short-ish and slice-of-life based - some continuing on directly, others skipping weeks or months. The chapters will be written from different POVs, and this will be gentler in pace than any of my previous works. Foremost it's an exploration of Jin and the kaleidescope of things that make him up, meandering through his life and the difficulties and loves he encounters. I'm really looking forward to sharing this one with you :)

Now is a pretty exciting time for me in terms of writing, so if you wish to support me, please check out my tumblr or twitter (username erenaeoth). PS. I personally recommend reading this story on archive of our own, where I'll be able to format the story better and will be writing author notes.