The landscape was dark again, but less blurry. She was in a kind of forest, where the dark and bare trees stretched their skeletal branches towards the sky. Not a star and not even a moonbeam illuminated the landscape, there was nothing to define the contours of that tangle of plants and gnarled roots. She was confused: she had no memory of that place and common sense forced her to run away, but something held her back. She continued to walk in darkness, wondering how she had not stumbled yet, heading for what seemed to be the end of that maze. And indeed it was so. Nina found herself inside a clearing and what struck her the most was a strong burning smell. And as if her eyes were like those of felines, even in the dark she recognized the contours of what looked like rubble of a house destroyed by flames. In the air, apart from the smoke, there was clearly death and despair. Why was she there? Who was in that house? In the distance resounded a faint cry of despair from a child, whose sobs were broken each time by too many tears. Yet she saw no one... Her rediscovered maternal instinct led her to look for that child everywhere, she wanted to help him ease his pain. She ran in the direction of that noise, going back into the forest. She could hear the desperate cry coming closer and closer, still a few meters and she would reach it... Yet after that short distance she was back in the clearing, in front of the burnt house.

"Where are you?" she yelled.

But no answer came. The weeping became more and more feeble, until it disappeared. A deafening silence surrounded the whole area. Even the forest remained silent..

" You can't help him yet." suddenly said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere."

"Who are you?" asked Nina, turning around.

Of course there was no one there.

" Soon you will understand... Soon you will know what to do... But now WAKE UP!"

Nina jumped, hearing the cry of little Keiichi, who had woken up in the middle of the night for another feeding, but she wasn't sure that it was really him who interrupted her sleep. Those nightmares again... That voice again. Every time she was ordered to wake up this happened, leaving her increasingly confused. Exhausted, she approached the baby to her breast, letting him stick: he had a really remarkable appetite and since they had returned home a few weeks, she could no longer rest as she had been prescribed. The wound of the C-section was taking longer than expected to heal, among other things it had been practiced over the cut from which Steve had been extracted, so the healing was even slower and painful. Although his firstborn helped her a lot during the day to allow her to rest to the maximum, at night she had forced him not to intervene, aware that he also needed to sleep peacefully. Which, apparently, she wasn't allowed to do. While cradling the child she tried in vain to understand what those dreams that had been haunting her for a couple of months now meant. She noticed that over time they were getting sharper, but she still couldn't make sense of it. And then that voice of a woman, who was sure to have already heard in a distant time, but who couldn't attribute a face to her, no matter how hard she tried. It was probably someone she knew before her amnesia, so her chances of remembering her were extremely low. But who was to help? What was to understand and what was to be done? Once she had finished feeding Keiichi and changed him, she put him back to sleep in his crib and put the cover back on him. She looked at his son's face, so serene and innocent, so incredibly similar to his father's. Who knows what he would think of him? If he hadn't been damned, would he have been happy to be a dad? Would he like to have a family with her? SHe could never know, now the child was her priority and her job was to protect him. She sighed as she watched the full moon outside the window shine in all its majesty.

"Oh Jin... If only I could know how you are... Only God knows how I wish you were here..."


Several hours before, on the other side of the world someone else had observed the same moon. He was restless too, but for other reasons. His evil counterpart, for days, was increasingly agitated. It craved blood, it craved destruction, but above all it craved power as never before. For his part, Kazuya was increasingly eager to recover what he believed to be his rightful possession, but now even that didn't seem enough for him anymore. The desire to get more and more was very ardent and began for the first time to struggle to keep his Devil's Gene at bay. He knew that the his son's gene part was dormant and hidden in some remote corner of his mind for the sole purpose of not being found to be acquired, because despite being two sides of the same coin, the one always tried to prevail over the other. He realized that not even a desperate condition like being on the verge of death was enough to make him react. Because Devil, who lived in his son's body, knew very well that he could not kill him, at the risk of losing what he wanted most. Kazuya gritted his teeth, looking at Tokyo with his hands behind his back..

"I know you can't wait to kill that little bastard, it's the same for me. And we will. But you have to wait.".

"How much longer? How much?" he growled, while his red eye began to shine with evil light. "I'm fucking tired of waiting for that brat, I've had enough of his cowardice and his heroism. I'm going to destroy it myself.".

"At the risk of screwing it up? No, it's not worth it, you know damn well he wouldn't react. However, there is something strange in the air...".

" What do you mean?" questioned the last of the Mishima.

" I can't understand, and yet for a few weeks there's something that doesn't make sense to me. As if...".

"As if what?".

" As if there was another entity similar to us.".

"What are you saying?" he barked. "It's not possible, you know that very well. Heihachi is dead, Akuma is dead, there's nobody but me and Jin with this power, or something like that. Even Lars is a very ordinary human being. It's just nonsense."

"It is true, however, although very weak and distant I can perceive it distinctly.".

"You must be mistaken. Rather, let's focus on Jin, he is the absolute prior...". He couldn't finish the sentence due to a sharp sharp in the head, that forced him to the ground on his knees.

"I..." growled Devil "I'm never wrong, Kazuya Mishima. I made you what you are, not the other way around, remember that! If I tell you that there is someone else like us, so it is, without ifs and buts. Am I clear?"

Kazuya gritted his teeth, muttering a "yes" that costed him a huge effort. Slowly he got up and looked back at the horizon and the sky, while a furious rage devoured his bowels.

Someone else like them, what the hell was that? It was not possible, it was absolutely unthinkable that the gene had been transmitted to a third person, following the hereditary path. Jun was dead, Jin had no one...

"Or maybe not..." Devil whispered maliciously before taking its leave.

The man looked out suddenly struck with awareness. It wasn't true that Jin had no one. Of course, amorphous and determined as he was in ending his line, it was practically impossible for him to make such a mistake. But now that the seed of doubt was firmly planted in his head, he had to make sure at all costs that his assumptions were true. He walked to his desk, and composed an internal phone number. One ring only, then hung up. Whoever was on the other side of the phone knew what to do. A few moments after the door of his office opened, briefly lighting the room. A noise of muffled heels rang out on the carpet as she walked towards her desk.

"Did you look for me?"

Kazuya did not respond to the obvious. He didn'tt even deign to turn around to look at her.

"Find your sister."

Three words, an absolute categorical, imperative, order.

The woman behind him shuddered, but she tried not to show it. What did this mean?

"But my sister is dead, you know... It was on the Mishima Zaibatu's fil..."

Her voice died in her throat when her boss turned and nailed her to the spot with his evil gaze. The red eye was more fiery and bloodshot than ever.

"Then bring me her corpse, if necessary."

The order given was clear and no reply would ever be allowed.