Chapter 2

"Again."

Jin Kazama readied himself, tugging on the heavy cotton gi pants to keep the cuffs from bunching around his ankles. He raised his hands. At his grandfather's nod, Jin snapped out two jabs which Heihachi blocked. Dropping to one knee, Jin aimed his right hand towards Heihachi's stomach; his grandfather avoided the blow by simply stepping back. Putting all his weight on his front leg, Jin pushed off into a leaping uppercut and jumped right past Heihachi who had sidestepped. In the brief moment before landing, there was just enough time for Jin to think, "Oh, God, here it comes."

Heihachi moved his hands from his right hip straight into Jin's gut and solar plexus knocking the air out of his grandson's lungs. The movement was so deft and quick that if he hadn't felt its effect, Jin wouldn't have believed it touched him. It was so deceptionally simple - a move that didn't even fully extend the arms - and yet it transferred enough power to sap all the strength in its target. To listen to Heihachi's explanation of the move, it involved altering the ki in your opponent; by disrupting the body's internal energy, the person's muscles would violently contract and incapacitate them. The unspoken conclusion was if the ki was altered enough, you could kill with this blow. As it was, Jin collapsed to the dojo's tatami mats clutching his stomach and struggling not to vomit.

"Again," Heihachi said, not moving to help Jin. "Your true enemy will not wait for nausea to pass. Get up, boy. We will undo your mother's weak training yet."

Jin pushed himself to his feet. Swallowing the rising bile, Jin glared at Heihachi. "She ... was not weak."

"Then why are you here now? Why isn't she here to complete your training?"

Jin swung his right fist at Heihachi and missed. He swung his left and missed again, but there was something different now. Jin could feel a change in the tension as though Heihachi was no longer at a cool distance. Heihachi was being forced to participate, and even if Jin couldn't knock him down at least there was the satisfaction that Heihachi knew he was no longer in complete control of the situation.

The fight didn't last longer than a few minutes and, when it was over, Jin added two new bruises and a bloody nose to the ever increasing list of injuries inflicted through his grandfather's training. But as Heihachi stood over him, with the two tufts of gray hair that extended above his ears like devil horns and the heavy eyebrows set in a perpetual furrow, there was the slightest of turns at the corners of his mouth.

"Remember this feeling, Jin. For the first time, you understand where your power is. For the first time, you feel the fire burning within you. Keep those flames alive, and when it's time for you to avenge your mother don't hold back."

Heihachi held out a hand and pulled Jin to his feet. "Continue your training. I have business to attend to."

"Sofu." Jin waited for Heihachi to turn before continuing. "She wasn't weak."

"Neither was your father. You come from a family of fighters. Never give up."

Jin bowed and when Heihachi had left, struck the heavy bag as hard as he could.

* * *

It wasn't enough. It was never enough. He could almost hear Heihachi yelling, "Again. Again."

Jin Kazama threw another punch and felt it bounce off the heavy bag as though he were a seven year old instead of nineteen. Again! Stepping back, Jin spun as fast as he could on his front leg and whipped his other leg up and around. The bag seemed to absorb his roundhouse and then shoved back, causing him to stumble. He barely managed to extend a hand to stop himself from falling right on his face.

"Damn it," he said gasping. 'No good,' he thought, 'I'll never be able to win like this.' The heavy bag didn't sway so much as jiggle like it was chuckling at his efforts.

Under Heihachi's training, Jin had grown in both strength and speed. His arms no longer struggled with sixty pound dumbbells, his chest had broadened, and a six minute mile run was merely a warm up. Yet, it was not enough.

Exhausted, Jin leaned his elbows on his knees. The heavy cotton pants of his gi had reached their limit in sweat absorption and were sticking to his legs, restricting his movement. The pants, black with deep crimson flames stitched along the right leg up to the hip, had been a gift from his grandfather. It was supposed to be reminiscent of the flames of a dragon - strength, power, indomitable spirit, but now it only served as a reminder of the day's heat. Not that he needed any more of a reminder.

His tongue, long since dry, tingled and stuck to the roof of his mouth. Even his forehead, which had earlier let a constant sheen of sweat roll from the edge of his widow's peak to his chin, no longer felt wet - a sign that he was on the verge of heat exhaustion. The thermometer on the dojo wall had gone from 34 degrees Centigrade at nine in the morning to a nearly unbearable 40 degrees in the three hours Jin had been training.

Staggering to the side of the dojo, he managed to open up the last of the disposable water bottles and pour most of its contents directly down his throat. It was as though his body simply sucked the water into itself, desperate to replenish what the heat threatened to rip from it. He poured the last few mouthfuls of water over his head to bring some moisture back onto his skin to evaporate and take some heat with it.

Anger. It was a trait his mother had constantly warned him of. Like Heihachi, she had described it in terms of a fire, but it was not something that could be controlled for power. It was always searching for a way to spill out in its endless quest to feed. Containing it would extinguish it, letting it loose would destroy all you loved. It was a dangerous path akin to letting a demon into your heart. And yet, in that short fight with Heihachi, Jin felt a power he had never felt before. The pain of loss had been dulled, replaced by a sense of purpose. Vengeance, not blood, coursed his body, fueling his muscles to react quicker and hit harder. Blows that had previously knocked him to the ground had only slowed him in his fury. There was even a moment when he had thought Heihachi would not have been able to stop him. He still wasn't sure how he was put down, but the power had been his.

He clenched a fist and then slowly relaxed it as his mother had taught him to release anger. Her lessons were all he had left of her. It was important to honor them regardless of what Heihachi taught.

The dojo lacked windows, but it was his grandfather's private training area. As one of Japan's richest men, Heihachi could afford to have the dojo open up into a traditional Japanese strolling garden complete with elaborate viewing pagodas and gently arching wooden bridges over fully stocked koi ponds. Jin had kept the door to the garden open since Heihachi had left that morning for the air it brought in, but had been too focused to enjoy the scenery. Now though, as he looked out to the sharply defined shadows beneath the heavy wooded areas and sparkle of sunlight on water, he saw her.

"Mother." She was dressed as she was the last time he had seen her alive at their mountain home in the Yakushima mountains: a simple white buttoned blouse and black pants that ended just below her knees. She looked at him and smiled the motherly smile that wipes away the tears of an infant and the pains of childhood. She stood on the water's surface, her feet making not so much as a ripple, and on a day when even the fish hid in the watery shade beneath the bridges, she sought no shelter from the oppressive heat. Her black hair, straight and unadorn, draped to her shoulders, and the shifting of the light upon it was all that betrayed her stillness. Despite the distance between them, Jin could see there were no wrinkles around her eyes; she had not aged and there was no hint of the death that had claimed her four years ago.

"Mother, look out!" The water beneath her seemed to thicken into sludge and come to life. A goopy tendril leeched onto her feet and slowly began to climb up her body. Jun didn't seem the least bit concerned about this, although as the goop wrapped around her chest the look of her eyes changed ever so slightly. It was now the smile of a woman leaving her child behind, of encouragement and sadness, a gesture to stay strong and believe that everything will be all right in the end even as they were torn apart.

An inhumanly large hand encircled her neck, and her face seemed to melt. Jun's body tightened, curling up as if being compressed from the inside, and the color drained from her body as the sludge finally swallowed her. The hand squeezed and the covered body exploded in a spray of muddy looking water and blood. In her place was the Ogre. He appeared as he had when he had first taken Jun's life, stepping out from the shadows of the trees. His towering figure blocking out the sun, hiding its dullish aqua skin in a silhouette. The shock of thick, ropy red hair that swept behind its helmeted head, the ruby colored eyes which seemed to burn, the thick lips pulled back from its teeth in a cruel half smile was all as Jin remembered.

Its smooth skin and epic proportions made it look as if it had been carved from a single piece of marble, a statue that could hold the world upon its back as it knelt atop a tall white column. Dense muscle rippled with its every movement, and the very air seemed to curve around its massive frame as if scared to brush the skin.

'No,' thought Jin. 'No, not yet. I need more training.' At the memory, his right fist began to ache as it had when he had first attacked Ogre after it had murdered Jun. It had been like punching a block of ice, resulting in a dull, cold numbness in the bones of his hand. His punch had almost bounced off Ogre's hardened body, like his latest exhausted punch to the heavy bag.

Ogre laughed as though it knew his thoughts. "You remember don't you, child? What you witnessed then was a power more ancient than any you will ever see again. I have been for centuries, and I shall be for centuries. Your feeble attack that day was all that saved you. You were not worthy to become a part of me, but I see you have grown stronger. There is hope for you yet, though you are still a student not above his master."

Jin could feel his heart palpitate, the feverish flush of blood filling his head. His eyes began to lose their focus, making the figure of Ogre seem to shimmer, phasing in and out of existence. Come on, he admonished himself. Push through the pain. Show an indomitable spirit - the spirit that can defeat ghosts. Do it for mother ... gritting his teeth, Jin tightened his fist. It would be different this time.

"Child," Ogre said, "you are not ready yet. Soon though, I will come for you. Mother sends her regards."

Before Jin could react, Ogre seemed to fly at him. The jagged mouth of teeth, like a tunnel, opened wide in a laugh like rattling bones, threatening to swallow Jin whole. Ogre passed through Jin with a sudden gust of wind that felt like the blast from an explosion. Staggered, Jin felt as though he were moving underwater as he turned, desperate to show one act of defiance to Ogre. His fist chased after the wind and drove deep into the punching bag bursting a hole into it.

Jin watched the sand poured out like a waterfall, a broken hourglass measuring the length of his life. Time was running out, the end was rushing towards him like ground to someone who had jumped off a building. The sand flashed by in a dizzying mix of dark and light. Absently, Jin found his hand moving to close the hole, like a soldier trying to hold in the guts of a wounded comrade. The sand slowed, but continued to slide around his shaking fingers.

It wasn't enough, Jin thought. It was never enough. And then collapsed.